Matching the rhymes of Jo, Resident of the Academy, who answered the preceding poem and presented it to me次韻趙留院和前詩來呈
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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 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.
I heard long ago that men of old
each had their own fit in what they delighted in.
One delighted in paintings and would gaze on them greedily;
another delighted in stones and cherished them beyond measure;
some delighted in looking at horses
and took joy in grading the colors of bay and black;
some delighted in the sport of cockfighting
and watched the breast feathers like brocade be torn apart.
What I delight in lies in this gayageum,
yet though I sought one there was no way to find it.
How grateful — your scrupulous and faithful heart
has washed away the want I so earnestly sought to fill.
Where should I find a thousand pieces of gold
to bestow thanks without reckoning the price?
One after another I call for it and have fair fingers play,
and shang (商) and jue (角) are heard striking against each other.
After that, copying out its sounds,
I can match them, roughly at least, to bamboo and stone.
Your poem, too, is fit to be sung;
in words and in rhyme you have truly got both.
Chewing it over two or three times,
how should it be merely the food of the eight delicacies?
The meaning you sent with it may be called deep as well,
and I shall surely set a gloss to every line.
Interlinear notes 1
予皆志譜曲。故云。
I had written down all the airs of the scores, and so I said this.