Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9

The Next Day, as I Was Leaving, Using the Rhymes Left by a Passing Guest, I Gave Him This明日臨行。用過客所留詩韻贈之。

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 9 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.

一樽相對酌松醪。繾綣論情淚灑袍。氷筯下垂簷霤直。雪花平合瓦溝高。詩肩向曉成駝背。病鬢侵寒竪蝟毛。昨夜睡鄕閑氣味。倍償顚倒簿書勞。

Facing a single jar, we pour pine ale, and talking over our feelings minutely, tears scatter on our robes. Icicles hang down and the eaves-gutter is straight, snow-blossoms join level and the tile furrows are high. My poem-making shoulders hunch to a camel's back till dawn, and my sick temples, invaded by the cold, stand up like hedgehog bristles. Last night's leisurely savor of the land of sleep repays twofold the toil of jumbled ledger work.