Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 9
Combing My Hair, I Sigh to Myself梳頭自嘆
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 9 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.
頭禿不須梳。短髮僅寸寸。強自容其櫛。聊以止癢悶。紺髮變星星。古人猶或恨。況無髮可梳。不死猶爲晚。枯木暫不僵。幸無風必偃。
My head is bald and there is nothing to comb; the hairs that are left are a bare few joints' worth. If I force the comb to it even so, it is only to stop the itching. Even that dark blue hair should turn streaked with white the men of old still thought a thing to regret; how much more, then, to have no hair even to comb. That I have not died is late of me, rather. That a withered tree does not fall for a while is only because there happily is no wind; blow, and it must lie down.