Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 13
Looking in the Mirror: Presented to Collator Yang — Two Poems覽鏡。贈梁校勘。二首
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.
1First Poem
怯把菱花拂古塵。恐緣形瘦轉傷神。今朝一覽眞堪詫。面暈猶紅鬂尙春。
In dread I took up the caltrop-flower mirror and wiped off the old dust, fearing that, my body being thin, my spirit had suffered the more. This morning one look was truly worth boasting of: the ring of my face is still red, my temples still in spring.
2Second Poem
千首詩中雙白鬂。萬家盃底一朱脣。分明邂逅坐相笑。却勝丹靑謾寫眞。
Amid a thousand poems, one pair of white temples; beneath the wine cups of ten thousand houses, one set of red lips. Plainly we met by chance and sit face to face and laugh, which is better after all than a true likeness vainly drawn in paint.