Matching the Rhymes of Bai Letian's Fifteen Poems Written in Illness — Written on the Pillow (次韻和白樂天病中十五首 枕上作)次韻和白樂天病中十五首 枕上作
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 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.
In the dawn cold I was afraid to lift my head from under the quilt,
but drawing by degrees near the brazier, hands and feet grow supple.
Shut up in this secluded room, still unable to go out,
I regret that in those days I did not roam my fill.
Office is like a worn-out shoe — what harm in slipping it off?
The body is like a lone cloud, drifting of itself from the first.
Do not believe the tale of the deer covered over with plantain leaves in a dream;
how should one know that at midnight the boat is carried off from the ravine?
I remember riding at leisure on a horse in search of blossoms,
and never grudging to toss off my fur coat lightly and trade it for wine.
The wild doings of my young days are truly worth boasting of,
and setting them down again in illness loosens my cares not a little.