Scholar Yi Daeseong Invited Me to Drink, and at the Table I Ran My Brush and Presented This to Him李進士大成邀飮。席上走筆贈之。
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 · 154 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 6 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.
I think how in days past, in the spring of the capital, I let my heart go
and lay deep in drink before a jar of white jade.
Now I have let my traces drift into a river county,
a traveler roaming ten thousand li of green hills.
I cannot bear to look at the broken clouds and the setting sun,
and in fine rain and slanting wind my heart is wretched for nothing.
My thanks to you, that you have called me and consoled my traveler's road:
the jade cup brims over and golden scales rise upon it.
Several troops in red skirts are dressed in the new fashion,
and one strain of mournful song stirs the dust upon the beams.
The host rises and dances and asks me to play,
and I take the geomungo, but before I can run my hand over it my headcloth is already wet.
The guests on all four sides turn and look at one another
and ask me what it is that smarts in me so.
I answer: of late the capital has been in turmoil,
and in broad day fresh blood ran dark in the nine streets.
I too barely escaped the flames of Mount Gonggang (崑岡),
and the hardships I met in my wandering are hard to tell in full.
My endangered bowels choke me at the mere touching of the ground —
how much more in this misty dawn beyond the pass?
To drink deep can roughly put off my rancor for a while,
so I ask of you: pour out three or four rounds more.