Matching the Rhymes of Academician Bak's Reply to the Poem on the Rhyme-Word 'rong' (籠) — Another次韻朴學士和籠字韻詩來贈 又
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 5 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.
How can one paltry country hold you?
For you I should make ready a cage the size of heaven and earth
The breath of the Way is empty of itself, fit to ride the wind
and your worldly ties are all gone, melted away wholly like snow
Why is it that, having come to the age for laying down office
you have become, for no reason, an old man who has lost his horse again?
If you do pack your baggage and set out, it will be when the spring grass is green
and holding back tears, could you bear to look at the red of dew-wet peach blossoms?
Rain and cloud overturn in the moment of a turned head
and sun and moon wane and wax in the turning of an eye
Stay yet a little, and wait slowly for the times to change
and do not go off to Jiangdong for the sake of sliced raw perch
Interlinear notes 4
此篇慰落職。君近因昔年所失。被劾。
This piece consoles him for having lost his office. He was lately impeached for a fault of the previous year.
君詩曰。値候三春歸弊邑。
His poem said, 'I shall wait out the three months of spring and go back to a country district.'
有不與妓共去之言。故云。
There were words about not taking the courtesans along; hence these words.
徐侯變 — the base text has 侯, but we take it as an error for 候 (to wait). The matching next line draws on the old story of Zhang Han returning to Jiangdong for sliced raw perch, so this is no place for a personal name to stand. — Translator