Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 2
Having Answered Letian's Fifteen Poems, I Write This on the Back of His Collection (旣和樂天十五首詩。因書集背。)旣和樂天十五首詩。因書集背。
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.
今古相懸地各殊。詞人襟韻暗如符。樂天曾唱吾追和。何問詩朋有也無。
Past and present stand far apart, and our lands are each different, yet a poet's inward grace is quietly the same, as though two halves of a tally were matched. Letian sang long ago and I answer after him, so why ask whether I have a friend in poetry or not?