Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 2

Matching the Rhymes of a Poem by Kim Hoeyeong, Licentiate次韻金秀才懷英

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 2 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.

壯士心懷未易論。一軒長嘯又黃昏。鼻端莫見成風手。眼底空餘泣玉痕。鬱氣蟠胸難自洩。狂言到吻可堪呑。靑山不鎖歸歟路。恨我窮途獨叫閽。

What is in the heart of a stout fellow cannot lightly be discussed I whistle long on the hall floor, and it is dusk again Nowhere to be seen is the skill that pares clay from a nose-tip as if raising a wind and beneath my eyes there remain, to no purpose, only the marks of weeping with a jade held to the breast A stifled air coils in my breast and is hard to loosen of itself and a wild word, though it come to my lips, may yet be swallowed The green hills do not block the road home bitter it is that on a road run out I alone call to the gatekeeper