Matching the Rhymes of Vice Minister Yi, Who Used Chancellor Yi's Rhymes in Sending Me Seed of Many Kinds of Vegetables次韻李亞卿用李平章韻寄多般菜種
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) 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.
I, who eat greens, am no lord holding a district,
yet I begged vegetable seed of you, and it came as though a tally had matched.
How should one young as you have calluses on his hands?
The part of the old farmer is fitting for me, whose beard is white.
It is long now since I untied the minister's seal,
and pulling up the mallows of my garden was foolish after all.
There is no need even to lean on the rain that hurries poems along,
for kindness reaching me like a wave overflows more than any watering.
Interlinear notes 3
需
This is Su (需).
二首
Two poems.
來詩云。生成德在何憂瘠。况有催詩雨亦濡。
In the poem he sent he said, 「There is the virtue of bearing and rearing, so why grieve over barrenness, and how much more when even the rain that hurries poems along gives its wetting.」
The sowing of garden greens is owing to you,
and looking over the many kinds, they suit my mind.
Thirstily I wait for the scallion bed to push up its tender hands,
and blankly I watch for the melon trellis to stretch out its long whiskers.
From now on I shall work hard at the pleasure of holding a hoe,
fearing only that I may become a fool who eats nothing but grass.
Waiting for them to grow thick, they will do for a relish with wine,
and of late heaven has granted the soil its wetting.
Interlinear notes 1
予家土瘠。近得別地稍沃。
The soil of my house is barren, but of late I have separately got a somewhat richer plot.