Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 7
I Visited Yang, Adjutant, but Yang Was Out, So I Called His Son-in-Law Master Yi and Talked with Him; Just Then Okcheonsaeng (玉川生) Came, and We Set Out Wine, and I Left This Poem in Long Lines訪梁參軍。梁不在。呼子壻李君與語。俄有玉川生來。因置酒留長句。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 7 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.
不見氷只見玉。飄然韻格淸不俗。相看眸子秋水綠。頭上烏紗螺點粟。玉川扣門來剝啄。白日與消碁一局。可人可人豈不服。伯鸞不在傷心曲。
I did not see the ice, I saw only the jade; his air, floating free, is clear and not common. We look at each other: his pupils are blue as autumn water, and on the black gauze cap on his head, conch patterns small as millet are set dot by dot. Okcheonsaeng knocks at the gate with a rap-rap, and in broad daylight we wear the time away together over one game of baduk. A man after my own heart — how should I not admire him? Boluan (伯鸞) not being here, it is a tune that grieves the heart.