Thanking my pupil Jo Ryeom (趙廉), Right Resident of the Academy, for bringing me a gayageum謝門生趙廉右留院持加耶琴來貺
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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 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.
Ever since I withdrew and have lived at leisure,
day by day I contrive what suits my heart.
What suits my heart is only the zither and books;
beyond these there is little I cherish and delight in.
In my late years I have taken pleasure in the old zither of Qin (秦),
liking it as one likes a woman's beauty.
Though my airs are not well in tune,
they still manage to draw out what is in my heart.
My house had never kept one ready,
and I could not help but seek one from another.
How earnest he is, this worthy man of my following,
who knew what my heart was searching for,
and came holding one in his hand
worth the match of a thousand pieces of gold.
It is truly timber from Yiyang (嶧陽),
and its sound is the clearest and most vigorous.
Lowering my hand I played it once,
and it was like a spring trickling down onto stone.
How should you, too, have been there from the first?
Surely he knocked at the door of His Excellency Ak (岳公), the chief minister, to get it.
Thank His Excellency Ak for me, I beg you.
Having got the gayageum I have forgotten sleeping and eating.
It sends off the cares heaped up over many years,
and in one morning they melt away like ice.