Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 6
On the Twenty-Ninth Day of the Eighth Month, Running My Brush to Thank Academician Yi for the Gift of Fresh Fish八月二十九日。走筆謝李學士惠生魚。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 6 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.
鱍鱍腥鱗活欲飛。江人來餉尙嫌遲。我因衰病身唯骨。豁與餘膏澤瘦肌。
Flapping and leaping, the fishy scales look alive and ready to fly away, and when the riverside man sent them, I still called him slow. Worn and ill, I have nothing left on my body but bone; share out generously the fat that remains and moisten this gaunt flesh.
Interlinear notes 2
百全
This is Baekjeon (百全).
豁與餘膏澤瘦肌 — since this records a gift already given, it is also read as 「…has moistened this gaunt flesh」. — Translator