Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 2

Written While Ill (病中有作)病中有作

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 2 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.

殘骸骨立僅存皮。戾氣侵淫霧四支。夢裡精神疲枕蝶。病中喘息劣床龜。妻兒漸恠含盃少。朝野應譏解綬遲。不是不思閑適計。勢難辭去世誰知。

What is left of me is bone standing up with barely a skin upon it, and a harsh humor has seeped in and veiled my four limbs like mist. My spirit in dreams is weary as the butterfly above the pillow, and my breathing in sickness is poorer than the tortoise beneath the couch. Wife and child grow puzzled little by little that I lift the cup less often, and court and country will chide me for being slow to loose my seal-cord. It is not that I have not planned for a life of ease — but who in the world knows how hard my circumstances make it to take leave?