Matching the Rhymes of Yi Baeksun (百順), Bureau Director, on Red Peonies in the Rain, in the Abbot's Quarters of Chief Seat Gi (其) at Yeongtongsa (靈通寺)靈通寺其首座方丈。次韻李郞中百順賦雨中紫牡丹。
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 · 2 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 17 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.
Spring is past, and to come by a famous flower is very rare;
truly she deserves to be called the noble one among the purples.
Her skirt hem soaked with rain — the woman of Yangdae (襄臺);
water seeping into her silk stockings — the goddess of the Luo River (洛水).
Always she boasted her surpassing beauty with a smiling face,
and now, holding weeping tears, she makes a lovely figure.
Her nodding is not the wind lifting her up —
she is saying yes to a poem that has caught the Director's meaning.
The strange strain of Geumban (金盤) is seldom seen before the eyes;
lovely when the sun shines on her, fitting when the rain soaks her.
Let the gentlemen of this world not set their hearts on her:
how should the emperor among flowers become another man's consort?
Her bowing and lifting is not a showing of coquettish airs;
she is soaked, and can hardly help her drunken bearing.
If she boasts her surpassing form in a purple robe,
then it is fitting that an attendant courtier like me should make a poem.