Matching the rhymes of Elder Yi of Seongsan, who answered the preceding poem and sent it to me次韻星山李先輩和前詩來贈
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 · 1 passages · 98 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 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.
The master is surpassing and unconstrained, hard to bind as a unicorn;
how should he fall within the bit and halter of the human world?
Though at court they vied to give him office, he would not take it;
he hid his traces, yet his name was not buried.
I asked you how many years it is now since you went back into hiding;
laughing, you said you had no mind to count the years.
When flowers open it is spring, when the trees shed their leaves it is autumn,
and the sun and moon, you said, are all outside what you reckon.
You asked me too what office I hold now,
and through how many reigns I have wearied my body in service.
I said the posts I have passed through span four courts already,
and that becoming chief minister was only a chance meeting of time and fortune.
Ashamed at heart and heavy with fault, I cannot lift my face;
I am glad only that in that year I had the courage to withdraw.