Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 15
While Ill, Shown to Song, the Instructor (文學)病中。示文學宋君。
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.
雙鬢蕭條雪萬莖。强名邦伯得專城。酒杯乾日生中死。賓從來時辱裏榮。病憶故人空有淚。老思明主若爲情。假敎身斃南荒地。白骨何人拾取行。
Both my temples are desolate, ten thousand threads of what looks like snow, and, called a provincial governor by force of words, I have a district to myself. The day the wine cup runs dry is a death in the midst of the hills; the time when guests and their servants come is a glory in the midst of disgrace. Ill, I think of my old friends, and there is nothing for it but tears; old, I think of my enlightened king, and what am I to do with that heart? If this body should die in the rough country of the south, what man would gather up my white bones and carry them home?