Deeply Drunk, I Race My Brush and Show It to Donggoja大醉走筆。示東皐子。
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 · 98 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
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.
Where was I in the old days?
I was amid palaces of reed-organ and flute that seemed to be and not to be.
My dream was ripening in the broad music of Juntian (鈞天),
when who was it that led me out to tread the red dust?
The great earth cannot bear up my feet,
and the great mountains are not enough to swallow into my breast.
I would leap out beyond the six directions,
yet within the six directions every wheel-rut is blocked.
I cannot look upon the far-off mounds and graves,
nor can I bear to weigh the dragon- and tiger-heroes of past and present.
Mount Penglai stands in the midst of the sea,
blue jade jutting up in splendor — who knows who melted it?
If you go first, I shall surely follow after;
why trouble to reckon the palaces of the sky immortals, the earth immortals, and the water immortals?