The Next Day I Again Played with a Beautiful Woman in a Dream, and on Waking Composed Again明日夢。又與美人戲。寤而又作。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 70 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
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.
I and the woman of my house
How many years is it now that we have slept apart
Do you count it a piece of luck that I sleep alone
That you come so often and coax me prettily
These things of the world of men
I have already said in full in the piece before
Why then will you not believe and accept it
But enter my dreams, heel following upon heel
I have been put to the test by a fair bag of skin
But how should a heart gone to ashes burn again
I hear that for one who enters the Way
The demons are sure to be first to block it
Are you too of that company
Begone, and do not linger
Interlinear notes 1
革囊 — When the demon king sent his daughters to test the Buddha, the Buddha said, 「You are nothing but bags of hide holding every kind of filth.」 — Translator