Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 8
My Left Eye Ached for Several Days, and in a Lull in the Pain I Chanted This Aloud痛左目累旬。痛隙有作口吟。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 8 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.
晻如明月蝕。暗若玄雲蔽。若言看書苦。一目何偏翳。右目雖不病。矇然好欲閉。天令備左右。廢一患莫大。設若作半人。胡顔見朋輩。
Dark, as though the bright moon had been devoured; black, as though a dark cloud had covered it. If one says it comes of toiling over books, why is only one eye clouded, and that one-sidedly? The right eye, though it is not diseased, is dim and keeps wanting to close. Heaven furnished me with a left and a right, and one being made useless, no worry could be greater than this. If I am to become half a man, with what face shall I look upon my friends?