Matching the rhymes of my pupil Yang Sinseong, who answered me次韻門生梁信成見和
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.
If the body does not get what is fine and ample,
men of old said that ease of mind is blocked.
The ear and the eye are organs of the body too;
how should they alone endure and go uncherished?
The ear wishes to hear fine sounds,
and the eye wishes to see fair colors.
Old as I am, I might well forget such thoughts,
yet the breath is sometimes stopped up in my breast.
For pleasing the ear there is nothing like the gayageum,
and by chance I sought one from a pupil.
You have been thoroughly versed in the writings of the sages from the first,
from the Three Mounds (三墳) and Five Canons (五典) on to the Eight Cords (八索) and Nine Hills (九丘).
Becoming a guide for the Confucian school,
you have already pointed out the straightness of the great road.
And more, in the midst of these lines
your brush runs as lightning strikes.
Answering my poem on the gayageum,
you struck the jade-bearing stone and brought the jade out.
It is far too precious to throw at magpies,
and so in vain it has become what I have got.
Seeing your ample and noble writing,
you shall surely enjoy the stipend of ten thousand households.
Whet the blade keener still,
and take care not to lay it down a moment.