Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 10
Again, With a Short Piece, Breaking the Notion of Taking Excessive Delight in Palindrome Verse又以短篇。破酷嗜廻文之意。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 10 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.
織錦雖信麗。不必嗜成癖。未免傷詩體。古人亦稀作。放逸心或泥。蟻封驥跼蹐。
Palindrome verse woven into brocade is truly lovely indeed, but there is no need to delight in it until it becomes a habit. It cannot escape harming the quality of poetry, and the ancients, too, composed it but rarely. If an unfettered mind be bound fast, it becomes a fine steed cringing and treading warily upon an anthill.
Interlinear notes 2
雙韻
It is in double rhyme (雙韻).
織錦 — This refers to the "Woven Brocade Palindrome Chart," the palindrome poem that Su Hui (蘇蕙) of the Jin wove into brocade. — Translator