The Next Day I Composed Four More Poems and Sent Them明日復以四首寄之。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 4 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 16 The collected writings of Yi Gyubo of Goryeo, gathered and cut in woodblock by his son Yi Ham in 1241 and revised and enlarged by his grandson Yi Ikbae in 1251. It holds poems and rhapsodies, memorials and reports sent up to the king, records written for temples and pagodas, stele and tomb inscriptions, letters and prefaces, and the state letters that passed to and from the Mongols during the invasions. The Lay of King Dongmyeong, which sings the founder of Goguryeo, stands in volume 3 of the first collection, and the daily life of a man who called himself the White Cloud Layman — with his wine, his zither and his verse — fills the later collection. The book closes with the last poem he wrote as his eyes failed and he laid down the brush, and with the dirge and tomb inscription others made for him after his death.
1The first poem
減却花中一朶春。削成手杖尙堪珍。芳情莫恨隨殘叟。我亦從前薄倖身。
Taking away one cluster of spring from among the flowers,
you pared it into a staff, and it is still fit to be prized.
Do not resent that a flower's fond feeling has come to follow a worn old man:
I too have been, from of old, a body thin in affection.
Interlinear notes 1
皆代權君。
All of them were composed on behalf of Master Gwon.
2The second poem
繁英曾占十分春。豈擬終成老境珍。惱盡人情花亦老。却來扶我一閑身。
The teeming blossoms once held the whole ten parts of spring;
how could they have reckoned they would end as a treasure of old age?
Having wrung out all of men's hearts, the flower too grew old,
and has come instead to prop up this idle body of mine.
3The third poem
靜尋山寺醉尋春。步捷方知杖是珍。觸境歸來堪送老。感君專與百年身。
When quietly I seek a mountain temple, or drunken go seeking spring,
only when my steps are quick do I know the staff is a treasure.
Wherever I arrive I may come back and see out my old age,
and I am moved that you gave it wholly to a body of a hundred years.
4The fourth poem
晚年慵似泥人春。六尺殘軀漸自珍。寸步尙期扶杖起。都將柱杖作吾身。
In my late years my idleness is like the spring of a man sunk in mire,
and little by little I come to spare this six-foot remnant of a body.
Even for an inch of a step I count on leaning on the staff to rise,
and I have made the staff altogether into my own body.