Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 19
Admonition on the Louse蝨箴
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
蝨從何生。黠莫如爾。入必深縫。目所未到。多匿褌底。手所未至。自謂得計。噆人不止。人不堪毒。必莫忍置。捫之搜之。投畀火熾。熾火不受。投畀饞蟻。饞蟻不受。爪甲亦利。蝨兮蝨兮。毋促乃死。
Where does the louse come from? For cunning there is nothing to match you. Where you go in is always a deep seam, a place the eye cannot reach; you often hide beneath the drawers, a place the hand cannot get at. You tell yourself you have found your stratagem, and you never stop biting people. A man cannot endure your venom, and in the end cannot bear to let you be: he gropes you out and throws you to the burning fire. If the burning fire will not take you, he throws you to the greedy ants. And even if the greedy ants will not take you, his fingernails too are sharp. Louse, O louse, do not hasten your own death.