Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 15
At the Bunhaeng Post Station, Rhyming after the Verses on the Plaque and Thinking of Old Times分行驛。次板上韻。憶舊。
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.
黃泥壁後昔留詩。漫滅無蹤莫記思。楊柳尙垂曾去路。江山猶似舊遊時。靑蛾安在空追憶。白首重來但暗悲。持節他年雖得到。上樓筋力恐先衰。
Behind the yellow earthen wall I left a poem long ago, but it is rubbed away without a trace, and memory can find no hold on it. The willows still hang over the road I used to pass, and the river and hills are the same as when I roamed here long ago. Where are those green eyebrows? I can only recall them to no purpose. Come again with white hair, I am only secretly sad. Even if one day I should hold a tally of office and come here once more, I fear the strength to climb the tower will fail me first.
Interlinear notes 1
甲子年。携妓宴此樓。
In the year of gapja (甲子) I feasted in this tower with courtesans.