Matching the Rhymes of Top Graduate Kim's Reply to My Poem "Planting Vegetables," Given to Him When He Came to Visit (次韻金壯元見和菜種詩。來訪贈之。)次韻金壯元見和菜種詩。來訪贈之。
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 1.3 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.
All my life I never became a lord who made the people prosperous,
and withdrawing to manage my own household does not suit me either.
To work the field I meant at first to move my own hands and feet,
but drawing the spring water, I fear it will splash my brows and beard.
Too lazy to cut the weeds, I leave them to grow as they will,
and sit hoping the vegetables will thicken — this too is foolish.
Better to throw this livelihood away altogether
and plow with my brush to moisten my withered bowels.
No sooner had I laid down office than I was enfeoffed lord of a drunken district,
and what I hoped for as I grew old, a hill of wine lees, has already come true.
For vulgar guests it is hard to turn blue eyes as Ruan Ji (阮籍) did,
and the spring wind idly whitens the beard of Bai Letian (白樂天).
I know you have long been ample in the study of the three abundances (三多) — reading much, writing much, pondering much —
while I am still a dull man who thinks a thousand times to gain barely one.
You kindly give me a handful of writing like jewels,
enough to drench the withered grass through.