Matching the Rhymes of Academician Yi, Who Sent Me His Poems Replying to and Thanking Jeong, Librarian-Director, for the Ink Bamboo and the Portrait — The Portrait次韻李學士和謝丁秘監墨竹影子詩見寄 影子
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 · 130 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 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.
The figures that are painted, now as in the past,
are men who hold at court the skill to govern a state,
or else they are the timber of generals,
fierce as tigers, with none to match them.
Of the men upon the Qilin Gallery (麒麟閣),
which of them was not chosen and picked out?
My talent has from the first no use,
much less when my looks are ugly too.
Even living, people already loathe me —
why then contrive for after death?
I have a body and have managed to be a man,
but I know nothing and come barely close to a beast.
When you went forth into office,
your bearing and presence shone at court.
You looked straight ahead and never glanced aside;
you walked by rule and never ran off lightly.
Thirty years you stood in the pure ranks,
yet in your breast there was not a thread of stain.
Why then is your figure not painted
and handed down long through the generations?
Instead they painted this foolish old man,
who with his bulging belly is forever filled with wine.
A hollow body faces a hollow shadow —
which of the two is the old man?
Bowing twice I ask Lord Jeong (丁卿):
will you not paint our Lord's figure too?