Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 9
Chanted by Chance偶吟
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.
無酒詩可停。無詩酒可斥。詩酒皆所嗜。相値兩相得。信手書一句。信口傾一酌。奈何遮老子。俱得詩酒癖。酒亦飮未多。未似詩千百。相逢迺發興。是意終莫測。由此病亦深。方死始可息。不唯我自傷。人亦以之責。
Without wine the poem may well be stopped Without a poem the wine may well be put aside I relish both poems and wine And when they meet, it is as if I had got them both As my hand goes, I write a line As my mouth goes, I tip a cup What is to be done — this old man here Has got both habits, of poems and of wine Of wine I cannot even drink much It is not as with my poems, a thousand or a hundred When the two meet, the mood rises in me And this intent I cannot in the end fathom By this my sickness too has deepened And only in death will it first come to rest Not only do I injure myself by it But others too reproach me for it