Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 3

Academy Doctor Yun Wi Saw My Poems and Prose and Sent Me a Poem Whose Preface Called Me an Exiled Immortal, and I Decline It次韻尹國博威見予詩文。以詩寄之。其序目予爲謫仙。予拒之。

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 · 28 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 min

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.

目我天仙徒慰耳。勉粧嫫母豈成妍。逢人輒必言皆爾。不亦多哉李謫仙。

To single me out as a heavenly immortal is only an idle comfort for however hard you adorn Momu (嫫母), how will she grow beautiful? If you must say as much to every person you meet would not Li Bai the exiled immortal be far too many?