Matching the Rhymes of Academician Yi, Who Replied Once More to These Poems次韻李學士復和此詩
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 · 2 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 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.
Do not take hold of my years and reckon them in detail:
you and I were born roughly a year apart.
How many times now have we sat out the winter solstice?
No sooner do we get this spring than next year comes.
The almanac goes to offer you an omen of long life,
and your poem comes to wash the soiled sprouts of my heart.
I am glad of your promise for the season when the orioles cry,
but you did not say whether there would be wine then.
Interlinear notes 2
冬至曆。故云。
It is the winter-solstice almanac, and so he says this.
公詩云。行逢爛熳鸎花節。端就林亭話舊情。
In the Lord's poem he said, "When in time you meet the season of riotous orioles and blossoms, come straight to the grove pavilion and we shall talk of our old friendship."
Unable to bear keeping the rare things of the south to myself,
I meant to swallow their dewy juice together with the immortal of poetry.
The road was long, and the pale yellow flesh hung slack and began to soften;
the days were cold, and the red hearts lost their fragrance bit by bit.
Precious as it is that they flew here from cloudy seas,
how can it match tasting them fresh-picked from a frosted grove?
I exchanged them for clear verses and chew them greedily —
what need is there to seek strange flavors in far-off places?