Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 18
Walking in the Garden, Moved to Feeling: Two Poems行園中有感二首
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 18 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
竹杖扶身勝健僕。花枝媚眼當佳人。行慵暫坐思前事。四十年前放浪身。
A bamboo staff holds my body up, better than a sturdy servant, and a flowering branch is lovely to my eyes, a match for a beauty. Too lazy to walk, I sit a while and think of things past: forty years ago I was a body adrift.
2The Second
臺上葵花嬌引我。臺高才尺尙難登。雖開老病身無力。亦爲鈞衡重莫勝。
The hollyhock on the terrace draws me on with its loveliness, yet the terrace, high as it is, is barely a foot, and still hard to climb. They say it is because I am old and ill and my body has no strength, but it is also that a Chief Minister's post is heavy and I cannot bear it.