Master Yi (李), the Administrator, Was Removed from Office Over an Official Matter and Was About to Go Home; I Sent Him Off with a Poem管記李君以公事免官將歸。予不能無悲。以詩送之。
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 · 119 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
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.
When long ago I first came to know you,
it was at Wansan, ten million leagues away.
Unlooked for, in the district of Gyeyang,
that I should take up the cares together with you!
You are already clearer than ice,
and I too have thought of ladling water to drink.
Like Lu (魯) and Wei (衛), there was no jealousy between us in governing,
and we meant to be together from first to last.
How could I have thought that you would suddenly be impeached
and would not put off your purpose of going home by so much as a little?
When I first heard it I was sad,
but thinking it over closely, you are to be congratulated.
In name this district is a great city,
but in its ruin it has had no equal from of old.
The people all have faces the color of herbs;
how should one bear to look on it even for a day?
I am already bound like a prisoner,
and shall surely die by this river where the miasma lies.
Happily you are one in whom blessing is gathered,
and lightly, all at once, you go.
My only regret is that under a fair spring sky,
when the peach and the plum vie in loveliness,
you cast me off at such a time and go home.
It seems that I have been cast off by heaven.