Matching the Rhymes Again for Yi, Director of the Chancellery, Who Replied and Invited Me Besides to Drink復次韻李平章見和兼邀飮
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.
Not only did we rise to a minister's seat at the same time;
we became joined branches in one grove of the Yi (李氏).
I first threw down a seal as big as a peck and begged to withdraw,
yet when we meet in headcloths I lift my brows at once.
The heart that looks up to you like a mountain is with me still,
and with Heaven looking down, how dare I deceive you with my face?
Take away your keeping our old friendship deep in memory,
and how could I follow the frivolous men who come after?
Interlinear notes 2
本聯親。
We were originally connected as kin by marriage.
來詩。有後生欺之辭。
In the poem he sent there were words about the men who come after slighting him.
In the old capital, in those peaceful days,
from time to time I heard the song "Golden Thread Branch" (金縷枝).
Now the four seas still run with blood;
where shall we unknit our brows together over a jar of wine?
The orioles laugh at our pleasures gone awry;
the white cranes cheat us of the immortals' promise we let slip.
A worn old man of seventy has been summoned,
and my going is in such haste that the servants run to follow after.
Interlinear notes 1
金縷枝 — kept as in the source text. Some take it for an error for the well-known song title 金縷衣, but since this piece is a rhyme-matching poem carried on the rhyme 枝, the source text has been kept. — translator