Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6
Composed While Crossing Sapyeong渡沙平有作
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.
久違鶴髮淚沾衣。自別蛾眉帶減圍。莫笑向京無一物。滿船猶載百愁歸。
Long kept from those crane-white heads, my tears wet my clothes; since parting from the fair brows, my belt has gone slack around me. Do not laugh that I go up to the capital with not one thing to show: I come back with a boatload of a hundred sorrows.