Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 5

Written in Jest on the Morning of New Year's Day in the Gihae Year, after Taking Spirit-Brightness Pellets己亥正旦。飮神明丹戱作。

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 · 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 5 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

擁衾閑坐未雞鳴。爲服神丹吸一觴。七十二丸應積貯。搜膓傾倒斗堪量。

I sat idly wrapped in my quilt, and the cock had not yet crowed; meaning to take the spirit pellets (神丹), I drained a cup. Seventy-two of them must have piled up by now; if I rummaged through my bowels and poured them out, they could be measured by the peck.

2Second Poem

豈獨歲華加我齒。神明丸亦作年籌。此丹非是還童藥。不爲傾盃殆必休。

Why should the years alone add to my age? The spirit-brightness pills (神明丸) too become the tallies that count it. This elixir is no medicine for turning back into a child; had it not been a pretext for tilting the cup, I should long since have given up taking it.

Interlinear notes 1

殆必休 — the giving up is also read as the tilting of the cup. — translator