Respectfully Replying to the Crown Prince's New Year's Day Poem — Praying for the Sovereign's Long Life奉和王太子元日令製 祝聖壽
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 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 9 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 five marks of the water clock announce the sovereign's spring,
and with pepper fragrance floating on the wine we pray anew for his long life.
The ranks of congratulation in the courtyard, like herons, turn their dancing sleeves;
the celebrating places in the palace, like orioles, set their singing lips at play.
That the ten thousand things are born comes indeed from the hidden workings of Heaven,
but the suckling and the rearing of them returns wholly to the sovereign's even bounty.
That the whole world rejoices together is owing to this age of ours,
so do not say that the men of old and of now are the same.
Heaven has granted ten thousand springs to the sovereign's years;
I beg that you begin to count them anew from this year on.
The fragrance of the immortals enters the apricot and hastens its red buds;
the sound of the Jie drum (羯鼓) startles the thunder and hastens the crimson blossoms.
Grass and trees have no mind in them—how should they know of themselves?
And the rearing of the ten thousand things by heaven and earth is even from the first.
The old man, old though he is, has his feelings still,
and straightway takes the South Mountain and prays with it for the sovereign's long life.