Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
O Deokjeon Went Roaming East and Did Not Come, and So I Sent Him a Poem吳德全東遊不來。以詩寄之。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 1 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.
海山東去路悠悠。一落天涯久倦遊。黃稻日肥鷄鶩喜。碧梧秋老鳳凰愁。煙波不返遊吳棹。雪月期浮訪剡舟。聖代未應終見棄。莫思垂白釣淸流。
The road going east to the sea and the hills is far off, and once fallen to the sky's edge you have long been worn with wayfaring. The yellow rice ripens by the day, and the fowl and the ducks are glad; the green paulownia grows old in autumn, and the phoenix is full of care. On the misted waves the oar that went to Wu (吳) does not come back, and you make it your promise to float a boat up the Shan (剡溪) on a snowbound moonlit night. The holy age will not in the end leave you cast aside, so do not think of fishing in clear water with your hair gone white.
Interlinear notes 1
吳世才字德全。
Deokjeon (德全) is the courtesy name of O Sejae (吳世才).