Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 3
Risen from Illness, Thanking a Friend Who Came to Call Bringing Wine病起。謝友人携酒見訪。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 3 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.
新沐南軒髮未晞。喜聞剝啄扣雙扉。學空終欲歸兜率。求死何須應少微。掉覺舌猶三寸在。撫憐腰始一圍非。飮中無復弓蛇誤。羽爵那辭信手飛。
On the south veranda my newly washed hair is not yet dry when I hear, with joy, a knocking at my two brushwood gates. I have studied emptiness (空) and mean in the end to go back to the Tusita heaven; seeking death, why should I answer to the Somi star (少微星)? I try it and find three inches of tongue still left me; I feel myself over and pity a waist that is no longer a full armspan. In my drinking there will be no more taking a bowstring's shadow for a snake, so why decline the feathered cup? I let it fly as my hand pleases.