Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 15
Song of the Bird in the Cage — to the tune Manggangnam (望江南)籠中鳥詞。望江南令。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 15 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.
籠中鳥竟日幾千迴。縱有一鳴脣舌在。那堪四觸羽毛摧。餒食益哀哀。天上路回首夢悠哉。再浴鳳池猶有意。新栖烏府豈無媒。且復待時來。
How many thousand times does the bird in the cage turn about the whole day long? Though it has a mouth and a tongue to cry out once, how shall it bear the breaking of its feathers as it strikes the four sides? With its starved feed it is the more pitiful. Looking back on the road above the sky, the dream is far away. The will to bathe once more in the Phoenix Pool (鳳池) is still there, and how should there be no go-between for a new roost in the Crow Office (烏府)? For now I wait again for the time to come.