Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 6
Again Matching the Earlier Rhymes, Left as a Parting Gift to Kim the Naehan (內翰), Going as Envoy to the Mongols又次前韻。留別金內翰奉使蒙古。
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.
知子年來頗瘦羸。那堪遠涉鴨江涯。正宜禁省成龍躍。不合胡天汗馬馳。曾是文章壇上望。如何邊鄙事中移。功成定被鈞台召。蒼海靈珠肯見遺。
I know that of late you have grown rather lean and worn— how will you bear crossing far beyond the banks of the Amnok? You are a man who ought to leap like a dragon within the palace, not one to gallop as a sweating horse under barbarian skies. You whom we once looked up to on the altar of letters— how is it that you have been moved to frontier business? When the work is done you will surely be summoned to a minister's seat; how could a numinous pearl of the blue sea be left lying?