Matching the Rhymes of the Magistrate of Jeju, Who Used the Rhymes of a Poem Sent Earlier to Inquire After Me and Also Presented Green Tangerines次韻濟州守以前所寄詩韻問訊。兼貺靑橘。
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 3 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.
Do not say that, being at heaven's edge, the sea is hard to cross;
when a body worth a thousand pieces of gold has come, what is hard in it?
Before my eyes I shall surely see the gentleman's face,
though I have already given this body over to the dusk of old age.
In a hot district you have taken good care of yourself, and that alone is precious;
how much more that you have received a new office in the Secretariat (中書省).
Did the poem I made the other day come true?
You are already turning now toward the spring of the herb-garden steps.
Interlinear notes 5
崔安
This is Choe An (崔安).
三首
Three poems.
予久病方愈。故云。
I had been long ill and had only just recovered, and so I said this.
以右正言徵來。故云。
He had been summoned back as Right Rectifier of Speech (右正言), and so I said this.
予前詩云。祝君須作省郞迴。
In my earlier poem I had said, 「Do please come back as a gentleman of the Secretariat (省郞).」
殷勤靑橘渡江淮。不要滋脣重遠來。二月離州今始到。可憐猶帶暗香迴。
The kindly green tangerines have crossed the Jiang and the Huai (江淮).
Surely they did not come so long a road only to wet my lips.
They left the district in the second month and have arrived only now,
yet remarkably they came still carrying a hidden fragrance.