Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 16
Feelings of the Inner Chamber, Two Poems閨情二首
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.
1The First
寂寂空閨裏。錦衾披向誰。相思深夜恨。唯有一燈知。
Within the empty inner chamber, desolate, toward whom should I spread the brocade quilt? The grief of deep night, when the two long for each other — only one lamp knows it.
2The Second
淚從心底出。豈與眼相謀。不似寒泉水。無情亦自流。
Tears come out from the bottom of the heart; how should they have plotted together with the eyes? They are unlike the water of a cold spring, which flows of itself though it has no feeling.