Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1
Hating the Flies While Dozing睡次疾蠅
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.
驅去還來力亦疲。掩衾謀睡夢成遲。干人身分何須責。飛墮盃觴自不知。
Drive them off and they come again, until my strength is spent; I pull the quilt over me to sleep, but the dream is slow to come. Clinging to people is their lot — why need I blame them for it? Yet they do not know themselves that in flying they fall into the wine cup.
Interlinear notes 1
二首
Two poems.
貪逐腥膻捨汝誰。點成緇白任渠爲。蕭然衾枕看何物。侶集喧喧必睡時。
For greedily chasing after what is rank, who is there but you? Dotting the white to make it black — I leave you to do as you will. What is there to see on a bleak and empty bed, that the time you swarm and clamor must be the time I fall asleep?