On This Day I Entered Wonheung Temple, Saw My Old Friend the Monk Gyu, and Presented This to Him是日入元興寺。見故人珪師贈之。
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 · 126 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 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 old days we roamed together in the capital,
and counting it up, it is fourteen spring winds ago.
You then were hale in spirit and not yet thirty,
and said that alone you could keep up with a flying goose.
I too had green temple-hair and was the youngest of all,
my eyes flashing and flashing like Wang Rong's (王戎).
After we parted we scattered like clouds — where was each of us?
In the wind and dust of the four seas two mugwort stalks rolled.
Meeting again, we laugh once and stroke the bronze man,
and tears well up, and though we say nothing our meaning is not spent.
The monk now has no longer his face of old,
and his leanness is like an old crane on a pine top.
I too have aged, and my heart has rather shrunk in,
and never again have I the rainbow-like spirit of old days.
Before we have done speaking of our feeling we are each of us saddened,
and all at once the setting sun is red upon the half-remaining peak.
A man's whole lifetime is only a moment,
and so I shall early give up name and gain and follow Zhi Gong (支公).