Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 2
Again Answering the Poem "Rejoicing That My Hundred Days' Leave Was Full and My Office Ceased" (又和假滿百日停官自喜詩)又和假滿百日停官自喜詩
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.
老病支離壽七旬。快哉今幸乞殘身。腰間誤怯猶垂綬。頭上何妨大岸巾。無復喝呼喧里巷。有時饋問謝親姻。懸車相位眞難事。莫道蕭條退散人。
Old and ill, I have dragged out a life of seventy years, and how bracing that I have at last been able to beg leave for what is left of this body. The seal-cord still hangs at my waist, and for no reason it makes me afraid; what harm if on my head I wear my kerchief pushed back? No more do outriders' shouts make a din in the lanes, and now and then I thank my kin for the greetings they send. To lay down office from the seat of a chief minister is truly a hard thing, so do not say that a man retired and idle is a desolate one.