Consoling with a Poem My Senior Yi Yang (李陽), Who Failed the Examination and Returns East李先輩陽下第東歸。以詩慰之。
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 · 1 passages · 87 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
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.
Have you not seen how the wife of Yi (羿) stole the elixir and fled to the moon?
Even Yi could not call her to account — who then could?
What is to be done? The gentleman's brush has a tongue,
and never rests from mocking the wind and the moon.
And so, that the fairy should steal her husband's possession,
and dare turn her back on a fine mate to become a lonely widow — at this he laughed.
When the poem was done, Heaven took it away;
it flew out through the moon's flank, and Chang'e peeped at it first.
Wishing to work out her grievance with you,
she forged Heaven's command and did not grant you one branch of cassia.
But Heaven has already settled the fairy's punishment for this,
so to wait once more for next year is not too late.