Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 16
Chanting of the Cicada詠蟬
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 16 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.
緬思齊日敻迢迢。宮女千年怨未銷。聲續山僧敲罷磬。翼偸淵客織殘綃。曉淸露重綠槐葉。雨霽日斜高柳梢。莫爲秋深空訴別。典刑猶在侍中貂。
Thinking far back to the days of Qi (齊) — how distant, how distant; the palace woman's thousand-year grievance has not yet faded. Your sound takes up the chime-stone the mountain monk left half-struck, and your wings have stolen the gauze the traveler in the water left half-woven. At clear dawn, with the dew heavy, the green leaves of the locust tree; with the rain cleared and the sun slanting, the top of the tall willow. Do not idly plead your parting because the autumn is deep: for your likeness still remains on the sable cap of the Chamberlain (侍中).