Encomium on a Painting of an Old Pine — with a preface畫老松贊幷序
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 · 148 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
Lord Gyu (規公), prior of Boje Temple (普濟寺), had the mountain-dweller Gwiil (歸一) paint an old pine on the wall of the office hall. Even in the height of summer, to look at it was as though a cool air came over one. The Zen master asked me to compose an encomium, and so with one sweep of the brush I write this after it.
There are real pines to be had,
so why was one painted?
This great monastery
is set within the capital,
where the four quarters come together
and carts and horses crowd thick.
There is not even grass beside it,
much less pine and juniper.
Our master came and lodged here
and hung his heart upon a green wall.
He called in a famed hand
to paint this green officer.
The bare abbot's room
was changed into a green mountain.
Ivy twines and creepers wind about it,
and the old trunk is coiled like a dragon.
No snow falls and no frost settles,
yet a clear wind blows cold.
In the place where a gentleman dwells,
how should there be high or low?
Whether one's station is noisy or quiet
lies in the man and not in the ground.
Quiet too is so by reason of the man,
and noise is nothing but the man as well.
He who makes this encomium serve as a colophon
is the old man of Longxi (隴西).