Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 10
Laughing at Myself自嘲
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 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.
冷肩高磊落。病髮短蕭踈。誰使爾孤直。不隨時卷舒。誣成市有虎。正坐水無魚。只合作農老。歸耕日荷鋤。
My cold shoulders stand high and jutting, and my sick hair is short and sparse. Who made you solitary and straight, so that you cannot furl and unfurl with the times? The false charge took hold—they said there was a tiger in the market; sitting upright, I find there are no fish in the water. It is fitting only that I become an old farmer: I shall go home to plow, and shoulder the hoe day after day.
Interlinear notes 1
入京後作
Written after he entered the capital.