Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14

Matching the Rhymes of Elder Mun's "Hearing a Friend Play the Geomungo"次韻文長老聞友人彈琴

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 · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 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.

通仙從水府。舞幻向珠宮。淚滴哀彈裏。心冥古韻中。寒敲松檻月。靜落竹階風。不待煩柔指。都令骨肉融。

It reaches the immortals and follows them to the water palace (水府), and shimmering it dances away toward the palace of pearl. Tears fall within the mournful measures, and the heart grows dim amid the old refinement. Coldly it strikes the moon on the pine railing, quietly it lets fall the wind on the bamboo steps. Without waiting for soft fingers to be busily plied it melts one wholly, bone and flesh.