In the Twelfth Month I Moved to Lodge at the House of Yi Hanjae (翰材), Licentiate, in Boan County (保安縣); Made at the Gathering, Thanking the Students of the Local School for Coming with Wine to Console Me十二月。移寓保安縣李進士翰材家。謝鄕校諸生携酒來慰。坐上作。
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 · 80 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 17 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.
A lonely body in a house of one bay,
a heart of one inch with ten thousand cares.
There was no one to look in on me,
so I made friends of the deer in the garden.
Unlooked for, the students in blue collars
took pity on me, a white-haired convict,
and each came carrying a bottle of wine.
That wine is savory and smooth.
The old scholar's capacity is shallow,
yet for your sake I empty the jade-like cup.
Only now do I know that students of one and the same school
are truly close-knit in kindness and in duty.
I cannot speak my being moved,
and only the tears flow.
Through a hundred generations he shelters his disciples —
from afar I am moved to our Master Kong Qiu (孔丘).