Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14
Responding to a Friend's 「Chanting the Tangerine」和友人詠橘
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.
癡兒始見訝黃金。弄久都無咀嚼心。玉殿何年參侍宴。親承御賜爛盈襟。
A heedless child, seeing it for the first time, wonders if it is gold, and fondles it long with no mind at all to bite into it. In what year shall I attend a banquet at the Jade Hall (玉殿), and take with my own hands what the king bestows, so that my lapels are full of its glow?