Matching the rhymes of Jo Ryeom, the Right Resident, who answered me again次韻趙廉右復和
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.
In old age one seeks an empty mind;
and if one casts the Way aside, where is one to go?
I would even forget this body of mine;
what is there to grudge in outward things?
You said of yourself that you had largely forgotten feeling,
and that you no longer followed sound and color.
Then why, when it comes to a deeply sorrowful air,
can you not keep the tears from wetting your breast?
And yet, in your old age,
you go about seeking zithers and lutes instead.
Trusting that your household is well off,
I was not ashamed to trouble you with asking.
To play with a clumsy hand is worse than not playing at all,
and to leave it be would be straight with reason.
My hand cannot keep its appointment with my heart,
and now and then it touches the strings and they clash.
It only makes a sound in vain,
and how does it differ from knocking on a shard of stone?
Yet thinking it over, had there been no such sport,
how should I have got a poem of yours?
Confucius played the zither and sang,
and for seven days ate no food cooked over fire.
And I am not even starving;
how should I have laid it down for even a day?