Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 10
In the Seventh and Eighth Months I Ailed in the Eyes and Could Not Compose Poems七月八月。因患眼不作詩。
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.
比因左目患。久矣不作詩。猶有右目存。云何迺如斯。君看一指傷。滿身苦難支。安有目官慟。同類恬不隨。興復從何出。而事作詩爲。
Of late, because I have ailed in my left eye, for a long while I have not composed poems. The right eye yet remains, so why is it thus? Look you — hurt but one finger, and the whole body suffers and can hardly bear it. How, when the one organ that is the eye is in pain, could the parts joined in one body stay calm and not share the pain? From where, then, should the zest come forth again to do the work of making poems?
Interlinear notes 1
八月二十九日作。九月初二日卽世。
Composed on the twenty-ninth day of the eighth month. The author departed this world on the second day of the ninth month.