Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9
Lodging at Night in the Jeonju Guest House, I Write Down My Narrow Heart全州客舍夜宿。書褊懷。
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.
一般男子有枯榮。堆阜撑胷意未平。盡日營中猶曲膝。五更窓外自呼名。狂言屢發眉堪灸。褊憤難消癭欲生。百計覓瘢難屈處。寸心長共水爭淸。
One and the same man has his withering and his flourishing, and a mound props up my breast so that my mind lies not level. All day long in the camp I bend my knees even so, and at dawn outside the window I call out my own name. I loose mad words so often that my brows deserve the moxa, and my narrow rancour will not settle, so that a goitre is about to rise. By every device they search for a flaw, yet there is no place in me that will bend: this inch of heart contends forever with water for clearness.