Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14
Moved While on Inner Duty: Shown to Sugu Won (水丘源), Right Rectifier of Omissions內直有感。示右拾遺水丘源。
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.
鏡中絲鬢日紛紛。五載遷延直掖垣。歲暮松筠猶有節。春來桃李又無言。仰看天上高鴻擧。自笑池邊老鳳蹲。胡羯腥涎流宇內。一樽何處得眉軒。
In the mirror the thread-like hair at my temples is more disordered by the day, and for five years I have dawdled on night duty at the Side Wall (掖垣). When the year draws down, the pine and the bamboo still have their constancy; when spring comes, the peach and the plum again say nothing. Looking up, there is a wild goose flying high above the sky; laughing at myself, there is a phoenix crouching old beside the pool. The rank spittle of the barbarians flows over all under heaven — where shall I get a jar of wine to smooth out my brows?