Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6
The Secretary Sends the Famous Kisaeng Jeilhong Bearing a Note to Ask for a Poem, and I Run My Brush and Give Her This書記使名妓第一紅。奉簡乞詩。走筆贈之。
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.
雲作雙鬟月作眉。刀頭相見更何時。十年不作湖州守。長笑多情杜牧之。
Clouds made her coiled hair, the moon made her brows. When will the time come to meet again at the sword's head? Ten years have passed and I have not become magistrate of Huzhou (湖州), so forever I laugh at the much-feeling Du Muzhi (杜牧之).
男兒心作女兒心。臨別殷勤淚洒襟。旅橐空來無長物。投詩一首當千金。
A man's heart has turned into a woman's heart, and at the moment of parting tears quietly wet my collar. A traveler's sack is empty and nothing is left in it, so I throw her one poem in place of a thousand in gold.