The Seon Master Having Replied, I Answer with Two Poems禪師見和。以二首答之。
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 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 7 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.
I have just opened the mother-of-pearl box, and the seal's mark is fresh;
I am moved that our master gives to others so open-handedly.
Who on the ground first gathered up the sleet that had collected,
and who picked the very smallest motes out of the air?
An eater like me would do well enough with coarse fare,
yet the fineness of the labour put into these is the most precious thing of all.
Worn and ill, I shrink from the cold and have drawn in already in autumn,
but boiled soft and warmly filling, they bring my spirits back to spring.
Our white-haired friendship is close and has escaped seeming newly made,
and when has your sending ever failed an old man?
Fine and square-cornered, they are not rolling jade;
small, yet with bodies congealed, they are unlike flying dust.
They are plenty for the morning and evening savour of a mean back lane,
so I let be the delicacies of water and land in a well-off house.
And you send a limpid poem besides, truly beyond my due,
so in shame I answer the “Song of Warm Spring” with a rustic tune.