Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 8

On the Seventeenth of the Sixth Month, Visiting Kim Cheol the Seondal (先達), Composed to the Rhymes of Bai Letian六月十七日。訪金先達轍。用白公詩韻賦之。

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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min

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.

羨君猶少年。蕭洒臨風樹。嗟我漸素秋。衰髮稀可數。相逢笑彈指。二紀眞電露。昔年交遊輩。雲散各何處。唯殘二人在。顔色坐成故。共遊京洛中。風塵化衣素。三旬密雨天。萬木蒼烟暮。此時訪君來。何忍辭君去。借君醉鄕留。忘我儒冠誤。愼莫談世緣。俱是孟門路。

I envy you, still in your young years, fresh as a tree standing in the wind. Alas, I turn ever more to white autumn, my failing hair so thin it can be counted. We meet and laugh and snap our fingers — twenty-four years, truly lightning and dew. The company we kept and played with long ago scattered like clouds — where is each of them now? Only we two are left, our faces grown old where we sit. Together we roamed within the capital, and wind and dust dyed our white robes. Thirty days of close rain in the sky, ten thousand trees darken in blue mist. At such a time I have come seeking you — how could I bear to take leave of you and go? I borrow your land of drunkenness and stay, forgetting how my scholar's cap has led me astray. Pray do not speak of the world's ties: all of them are the steep road of Mengmen (孟門).