Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1
Sung While Breaking Off Flowers折花吟
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.
折得花枝作酒籌。花枝未盡人先醉。請君留却最繁叢。客惡何妨明日至。必須滿揷窮歡遊。然後送春無歉意。爲問花心亦肯無。愼勿負期輕墮地。君不見貴人園苑惜花深。雨惡風顚那忍視。
I broke off flowering branches to use as tallies for the wine, and before the branches ran out the man was drunk first. I beg you, leave the thickest cluster standing: what harm if the guest be hateful and come again tomorrow? One must stick them in by the armful and play till the pleasure is spent; only then will there be no regret in sending the spring away. I ask: does the heart of the flowers mean to be so too? Do not, I pray, betray the appointment and fall lightly to the ground. Have you not seen how deeply flowers are cherished in a great man's garden? How could one bear to watch the cruel rain and the wild wind?