Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 13

Written While Drinking, Having Gone into the House of a Bold and Gallant Man on a Spring Day春日。入豪俠家飮有作。

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.

自緣病脨懶尋春。紫陌今朝散步巡。賴有君家開劇飮。免敎吾輩負芳辰。花顔嬌奼工留客。酒力麤剛解倒人。挼碎牧丹投舞妓。故看頩頰薄生嗔。

Sick and gaunt, I had been lazy about seeking out spring, but this morning I stroll idly along the streets of the capital. Happily your house has opened a great drinking party and kept us from failing the fine season. Flower-like faces, graceful, are good at holding a guest; the force of the wine, coarse and strong, knows how to knock a man down. I rub a peony to pieces and throw it at the dancing courtesan, and deliberately watch a slight anger rise in her flushed cheeks.