Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 12
A Question Put to Kim Daenyeon問金大年
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.
故人來扣扉。矉額復嚬眉。若是懷殷憂。何暇訪人爲。徐徐候動止。些少不平耳。飮之數四杯。儻可寬愁思。問子能飮無。有酒幸芳旨。非欲苟醉君。要看詩放肆。
An old friend comes and knocks at my brushwood gate, his forehead creased, his brows knit again. If he were carrying some deep trouble, what leisure would he have had to call on another? Slowly I look over his bearing: he is only a little out of sorts. If I let him drink three or four cups, perhaps his cares can be loosened. I ask you, sir, can you drink? I have wine, and happily it is fragrant and good. It is not that I would merely get you drunk — I want to see the poems come pouring out.