Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1
In a Dream I Spoke of My Feelings with Yu (裕), Head Seat of Deungmyeongsa (燈明寺); as Someone Happened to Be Coming, I Sent This Poem夢與燈明裕首座論懷。適有來人。以詩寄之。
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.
夢似空虛亦可援。故人相見問寒暄。不然萬水千山外。一覿猶難矧一言。
A dream seems empty, and yet it can still be held fast: I met an old friend and asked after his health. Were it not so, beyond ten thousand folds of water and a thousand folds of mountain, even one sight would be hard — how much more a single word?