Matching the Rhymes of the Poem Academician Pak Sent in Reply次韻朴學士見和
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 · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 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.
At your house you met your old companions
And enjoyed together the opening of the famous flowers
Ah, my own feeling was drawn that way too
But sickness made me miss the enjoying of it with you
In old age I had hoped to roam at my ease
How is it that I have met with this ailment
And I blame the god of spring himself
For not first making my eyes bright
He has let the good flowers open for nothing
And boasts of the brightness of red brocade
Because of this I long for the days of my youth
When even under the rocks my eyes flashed like lightning
My eyes are sick but my hand is not
And I make a single poem, playing with the brush
You troubled yourself to send me your lines
And cut short the feeling that stifled me
The sense is thick and the words are true
Three times over I read it, and three times again I marveled
Only, seeing the words about going south
How should my face not go red
A minister in retirement has no way to pass a word along
And so I have left you thus without an office
Interlinear notes 2
父久失官
Academician Pak's father had long been out of office.
巖下電爛爛 — Some read it as a scene from his youth, when he read his books in the mountains. Since the whole piece is about his eye ailment, it has been taken as the flash of his eyes in his young days. — Translator