Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 12
Attending Censor Pak Having Answered in Kind, I Match His Rhymes Again and Respectfully Reply朴侍御見和。復次韻奉答。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 12 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.
他年返旆共朝天。應記戎衣寄此巓。才見雪華飄似絮。又看草色綠於煙。干戈叢裏開詩戰。刀斗聲中酌酒賢。粗報國恩唯是地。惰夫如我敢抽旋。
When on some later day we turn our banners back and go together to court, we shall surely remember how in soldiers' coats we lodged upon this summit. Barely had we seen the snow-flowers drifting like willow down, and now we see the grass more green than the mist. Amid the heaped spears and swords we open our battle of poems, and in the sound of the camp kettles (刀斗) we pour out the sagely wine. The one place to repay the state's kindness in some measure is just here, so how should a sluggard like me dare to withdraw?