Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 10

I Am Old and Have Already Given Up the Love of Women, but Poetry and Wine I Have Not Yet Cast Aside. Poetry and Wine Are Only for Lending Zest Now and Then and Must Not Become a Habit. Once They Become a Habit They Are Demons. I Have Worried Over This Long, and Wishing to Lessen Them by Degrees I First Compose Poems on the Three Demons to Show My Intent — The Demon of Women予年老久已除色慾。猶未去詩酒。詩酒但有時寓興而已。不宜成癖。成癖卽魔。予憂之久矣。漸欲少省。先作三魔詩以見志耳。 色魔

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 · 28 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 min

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.

自顔和好猶堪喜。彼面雖姸奈我何。多向美人終蠱惑。男兒誰免誤於魔。

If one's own face be at peace and well, that alone is fit to rejoice in, and though that other face be lovely, what has it to do with me? Yet commonly men lean toward beauties and end by being bewitched; among men, who escapes being led astray by the demon?

Interlinear notes 1

一作猶無取。

Where this has "that alone is fit to rejoice in," some copies have "there is rather nothing to be taken in it."