Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 3
Sending Someone Off by the River in Late Spring, with Feeling — In Six Characters暮春江上。送人後有感。六言。
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.
暮春去送人歸。滿目傷心芳草。扁舟他日歸來。爲報長年三老。
In the waning spring I send someone off and come back and the fragrant grass filling my eyes wounds my heart If the little boat comes back some later day let the old ferryman bring me word
煙水渺瀰千里。心如狂絮亂飛。何況落花時節。送人能不依依。
The misty water stretches a thousand li away and my heart flies in confusion like mad willow-down How much more, in the season when blossoms fall can one send a friend off and not feel the loss?
殘霞映日流紅。遠水兼天鬪碧。江頭柳無限絲。未解絆留歸客。
The lingering glow flows red against the sun and the far water contends with the sky in blueness The riverside willow has threads without end yet it cannot tie down the traveller going home