Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 12
Answering in Kind Again復和
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.
已是芳菲二月天。如何猶寓碧山巓。感公芳酒深渟海。入我乾喉沃滅烟。戰士貪功爭自勇。幕寮邀賞各相賢。唯殘無賴狂癡客。心似方輪未解旋。
It is already the flowering sky of the second month, so why are we still clinging to this green summit? My thanks that your fragrant wine is deep, pooled like the sea, and entering my parched throat it wets and quenches the smoke. The fighting soldiers covet merit and vie in being brave of themselves; my colleagues in the field headquarters hope for reward and each is good to the other. Only this mad and foolish wanderer is left, with nothing to lean on, whose heart is like a squared wheel and does not know how to roll.