Lamenting Academician Yi, Shown to Academician Bak哭李學士。示朴學士。
嗟嗟賢學士。已矣今迺死。齒幾中壽年。身涉正卿位。男兒苟至此。逝亦無慊意。所恨一子存。粗足奉家祀。方君伏枕時。被謫向千里。其去才彌旬。尙未知到未。君復奄然殂。有誰主襄事。煢煢一老婦。擗踊哭內次。今歲春三月。于時病已始。大集耆老公。妓樂與俱備。曰是生死別。努力好勤醉。滿堂爲之悲。其間或掩淚。斯言今果中。吾謂眞達理。是亦人所難。猶可語同志。老境寡詩伴。唱酬嘗與子。郢質今已亡。於誰斲墁鼻。
Ah, worthy Academician, it is over — now you are dead. You enjoyed a fair span of years, and your person reached the ranks of the chief ministers; if a man has truly come this far, there is nothing to be sorry for in departing. What is bitter is that only one son is left, barely enough to carry on the family's rites. Just when you had taken to your bed, ill, he was sent into banishment and set out on a road of a thousand li, and it is barely ten days and a little more since he left, so we do not yet even know whether he has arrived. And you too have suddenly left the world — who is to take charge of the funeral? One lone old wife, beating her breast and stamping her feet, wails within. In the third month of this spring the illness had already begun. You called the old gentlemen together in a great gathering, with singing girls and music provided as well, and said that this was a parting of the living and the dead, urging that we set to and drink ourselves drunk. All who filled the seats were saddened by those words, and some among them hid their tears. Those words have now indeed come true; you, truly, may be called one who penetrated the principle of things. This too is a thing others find hard to do, yet it is worth telling to one of like mind. In my old age companions in poetry have grown few, and it was with you that I used to exchange them. Now the man of Ying (郢) who made me his match is gone; whose nose-tip plaster shall I pare away with an axe?
Interlinear notes 4
百全
His name was Baekjeon (百全).
仁柢。七月十日卒。
His name was Injeo (仁柢). He left the world on the tenth day of the seventh month.
中壽 — The source text has 中壽. Zhuangzi takes it as eighty, while other writings reckon it at seventy or at sixty, so the number of years cannot be fixed and no figure has been given. — translator
斲墁鼻 — An old story from Zhuangzi. A man of Ying would daub plaster on the tip of his nose and stand still, and Carpenter Shi (匠石) would pare away that plaster alone with his axe; after the man died there was no one left on whom he could show his skill. — translator