Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 4
Singeing His Beard爇鬚
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 4 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.
明皇雜錄曰。帝友愛至厚。設五幄。與諸王更處。號五王帳。薛王病。親設藥。誤爇其鬚。
The Minghuang zalu (明皇雜錄) says: The Emperor's love for his brothers was most deep. He set up five curtained tents and stayed by turns with the several princes, calling them the Tents of the Five Princes (五王帳). When the Prince of Xue (薛王) fell ill he decocted the medicine himself, and by mischance singed his own beard.
世情漸薄似秋雲。兄弟猶爲行路人。一見唐皇爇鬚事。臨書不覺淚霑巾。
The feelings of the world grow thin as an autumn cloud, and even brothers become as strangers on the road. Reading once of the Tang sovereign who singed his beard, I sit before the page, and unawares tears wet my kerchief.