Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 4

Repairing the South Pavilion (南軒) on the Twenty-Fifth Day of the Sixth Month六月二十五日。理南軒。

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 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 4 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.

1First Poem

自擬今年上界遊。南軒頹廢不曾修。頑然鶴骨猶無恙。洒掃還圖且復留。

Thinking that this year I should become an immortal and depart, I never repaired the South Pavilion though it fell into ruin. Tough as they are, these crane-thin bones are still sound, so I think to sweep and scrub it and try dwelling there again.

Interlinear notes 1

二首

Two poems.

2Second Poem

人導狂癡遮長老。算家推步頗曾知。如何錯計仙遊日。已棄南軒更理爲。

People call this Elder mad and foolish, though I had learned well enough how reckoners count the days by the stars. Why then did I miscount the day of my going off as an immortal, and now repair the South Pavilion I had already given up?

Interlinear notes 1

予曾號南軒長老。

I had once taken the sobriquet Elder of the South Pavilion (南軒長老).