Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 7
Written Because I Had Lain Ill Long Without Mending臥病久不療。因有作。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 7 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.
纏綿疾云劇。幾頓恃微脈。此亦非死病。死我天何惜。七十有三翁。昇天路非隔。何年長揖歸。問天天自默。步算頗可知。吾算有時忒。
They say the lingering illness is grave, but how many times have I leaned on this frail pulse? This too is not a mortal sickness, yet why should heaven be sparing in killing me? An old man of seventy-three, the road up to heaven is not far. In what year shall I make my long bow and return? I ask heaven, and heaven is silent. The courses of the stars may be reckoned and known, but the reckoning of my life goes sometimes astray.