Matching the Rhymes of Academician Pak's Further Reply to My Poem on Missing the Flower-Viewing次韻朴學士又和失看花詩
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.
How should a man live on as a widower
There must be a woman to sew up a torn coat
Why have you turned away your singing-girl concubine
And cast off altogether what you used to enjoy
Moreover, long as you have been thrown into an idle post
You are calm and do not fret for yourself
And after writing letters in the empty air and sighing
You set about giving pleasure to the eyes of guests and friends
You swept out a single thatched pavilion and drew your guests in
And enjoyed together the brightness of the red peach blossoms
I can guess that you tipped the thick waves of wine
And vied in spreading out poems like brocade
Sickness kept me from taking part
And I had no share even in the sound of song and pipe
Yeosu (麗水) lies in the south of the country
The sky is far, and even the road of dreams is cut off
I too would go home
How should I bear to have no sigh rise in me
Now that the mind to go home is to be stopped
My reddened face is much relieved
How should I be the only one to redden
A man without office can hardly rescue a man without office
Interlinear notes 1
來詩云卜南心已斷
In the poem he sent he said, 「I have already cut off my mind to go south.」