Matching the Rhymes of Academician Pak's Reply on the Frog Rhymes次韻朴學士和蛙字韻詩
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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 4 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.
1First Poem
冒熱衝霖得得過。狂吟初獨和鳴蛙。感君手自親琴弄。更喚家倡爲唱歌。
Braving the heat and piercing the monsoon rain, you came and went with steady tread.
To my wild chanting, at first only the croaking frogs replied.
Grateful that you played the gayageum with your own hands,
I called out the household entertainer again to sing.
Interlinear notes 4
仁著
This is Injeo (仁著).
三首
Three poems.
是日大雨。
On this day there was a heavy rain.
是日先於置酒。作此韻詩。
On this day, before the wine was set out, I composed a poem on these rhymes.
2Second Poem
不思殘景隙駒過。卞急時時似怒蛙。無限家中不平事。一時消盡玉人歌。
Not thinking that the years left me pass like a horse glimpsed through a crack in the door,
I grew impatient and was at times like an angry frog.
All the endless vexations of my household
melted away at once at one song from a lovely person.
Interlinear notes 2
邇來於家好暴怒。
These days I often flare up in anger at home.
臨行一高歌。大豁欝情。故云。
As the gathering was breaking up she sang one tune aloud, and my stifled heart was greatly eased; so I said this.
3Third Poem
感子能容故舊過。不將牡菊屛喧蛙。飮中號叫猶狂態。拙手彈箏亂好歌。
How grateful I am that you bear generously with an old friend's faults,
and do not take seedless chrysanthemums to drive off the noisy frogs.
To shout and cry out at the wine table is madness still,
and with clumsy hands I played the zither and threw the fine singing into disorder.
Interlinear notes 1
牡菊 — a chrysanthemum that sets no seed. The expression comes from an old saying that if you scatter its ashes the frogs cannot croak. — Translator