Another Separate Poem, Thanking Him for the Gift of Candles — Yugong (裕公) had these three poems cut on a board and composed a preface (序) and sent it, so it is appended here又別成一首。謝惠燭。 裕公以此詩三首上板。因有序寄之。幷附。
右詩三首。今寶文閣待制李公某所著也。髡於公辱知最厚。往者伏承朝旨。寓闕內山呼亭。祝嵩之際。公亦以翰林在禁中。草詔餘隙。屢訪予居。一日。偶有客五六人。謂公曰。吾儕飽聞公之唱韻走筆。未親覩也。請從衆懇許之如何。公曰諾。坐客迭相唱韻。公卽走筆。書于壁云。暫出銀臺署。來尋竹閣僧。飢飧宜煮蕨。禪話更添燈。蓮社難連訪。金閨業已登。閑忙皆有伴。喧靜豈無朋。師似雲無繫。予如木不繩。快哉今夜飮。遮莫火輪昇。後數日。爲今淸河相國所薦。乃入晉康公邸。公先密使相國修文殿大學士琴公。抄韻五十餘字。召公於座前。仍命寮屬諸卿分奉筆硯。公自占庭中所養孔雀爲題。使學士連聲唱韻。屢督促之。公旁若無人。傲然嘯詠。卽下筆如迅雷奔電。不容一瞥。晉康公嘆息至垂涕。因奏于上。超資授六品。未幾。遷右正言，知制誥。噫。公之如此神妙盛作之膾炙人口者。不可勝紀。而此詩三首。如公所言使者在門督促。故走筆和成遠寄。則予恐湮沒無聞。後莫有知之者。今上板釘于壁上。以壽其傳云耳。時重光大荒落皐月旣望。西伯寺典香火老髠跋。
The three poems above were composed by a certain Lord Yi (李公), now Edict Attendant of the Bomun Pavilion (寶文閣待制). I, a monk, have received from the lord the most generous recognition. In former days, when by the court's intent I stayed at the Sanhojeong (山呼亭) within the palace and prayed for the king's long life, the lord too was in the palace as a Hallim (翰林) academician, and in the intervals of drafting edicts he came several times to my lodging. One day there happened to be five or six guests, and they said to the lord, "We have heard our fill of how you run your brush following rhymes called out to you, but we have not seen it ourselves. How would it be if you granted the request of us all?" The lord said, "Very well." The guests who sat there called out rhymes by turns, and the lord at once ran his brush and wrote on the wall.
For a while I came out from the office of the Silver Terrace (銀臺) and sought out the monk of the bamboo house. If hungry, one may boil bracken and eat; over talk of Seon (禪) we trim the lamp again. The Lotus Society (蓮社) is hard to seek out one after another, and in the Golden Chamber (金閨) my body has already risen. Leisure and busyness both have their mates, and how should noise and quiet be without their companions? You, monk, are like a cloud with nothing to bind it, and I am like a tree that has taken no carpenter's line. How bracing is the wine of this night — let the chariot of fire rise or not, as it will.
A few days later, on the recommendation of the present Lord Cheongha (淸河相國), he entered the house of Lord Jingang (晉康公). Lord Jingang first had the Lord Chancellor and Lord Geum (琴公), Grand Academician of the Sumun Hall (修文殿大學士), secretly choose more than fifty rhyme-words, and summoned the lord before his seat. Then he had the lower officials and the various ministers share out the holding of brush and inkstone. The lord himself took as his subject the peacocks kept in the courtyard, and had the academicians call out rhymes one after another and press him often. The lord chanted without constraint, as though no one were beside him, and then set down his brush like swift thunder and running lightning, with not so much as the space of a single blink. Lord Jingang sighed, and went so far as to shed tears, and on this account he reported it to the king and gave him the sixth rank, passing over the regular steps. Soon after he was moved to Right Rectifier of Omissions and Drafter of Edicts (右正言知制誥). Ah, of the lord's works, so marvelous and abundant as these, that pass from mouth to mouth among men, not all can be written down. Yet these three poems, as the lord said, were answered with a running brush and sent far off because the messenger stood at the gate and pressed him; and I fear that they may be buried and lost, with none to know them hereafter. So now I have cut them on a board and nailed it to the wall, only to make their transmission long-lasting. The time is the sixteenth day of the Gowol (皐月) month of the year Junggwang Daehwangnak (重光大荒落). Written as a colophon by the old monk in charge of the incense at Seobaeksa.
Interlinear notes 1
今晉陽侯也。
He is the present Lord Jinyang (晉陽侯).