Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 8
Drinking by Night in the Abbot's Room of the Zen Elder Donsik at Anhwa Temple, I Use Dongpo's Rhymes安和寺敦軾禪老方丈夜酌。用東坡韻。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 8 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.
十年蓮社阻從容。日幾西沈水幾東。援筆舊曾題莫莫。挑燈今復說空空。學禪師作癯形鶴。避世吾爲斷尾雄。從此買山長門道。不須辛苦送韓窮。
For ten years I have been kept from living quietly in the Lotus Society (蓮社); how many times has the sun sunk in the west, how many times has the water gone east? Taking up the brush, long ago I wrote "Makmak" (莫莫); trimming the lamp, now again I speak of "Gonggong" (空空). Learning Zen, the master has become a gaunt-shaped crane; fleeing the world, I have become a cock with its tail cut off. From now I will buy a hill and keep to the Way for good, and there is no need to labour at sending off Han Yu's straits.