Matching the Rhymes of Kim Ingyeong (仁鏡), Privy Councillor, on His Lament for State Minister Geum次韻金樞密仁鏡哭琴相國
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.
With a golden chain they once tethered the nine-hued girin (麒麟),
and he came back to the green fields to nurture his inborn truth.
Men whose examination fame and high fortune matched the Master's —
how many have there been, in old times or now?
Below his courtyard the iris and orchid were lush of themselves;
before his gate, for whom is the spring of peach and plum blossom?
One like me, a friend of the house for generations, happened to fall ill
and could not follow the bier-cart at dawn.
He came forth to answer a flourishing age and became a phoenix and a girin,
then suddenly cast off the bonds of dust and rose to pay court to the True.
It is not only the world below that covets a worthy minister —
one must believe that Heaven too has need of good men.
I still remember, in the dog days of last year,
how he let our company tip out a single bottle of wine.
That joy makes me the more wretched now,
and wailing and leaping, I let the headcloth fall from my head.
Interlinear notes 1
予去年六月。携壺往謁。公甚歡飮。
When I called on him last year in the sixth month with a bottle of wine, the lord was greatly pleased and drank.