Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
Chanted by Chance on the River江上偶吟
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 1 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.
衮衮長江流向東。古今來往亦何窮。商船截破寒濤碧。漁笛吹殘落照紅。鷺格斗高菰岸上。鴈謀都寄稻畦中。嚴陵舊跡無人繼。終抱煙波作釣翁。
The long river rolls on and flows east, and the coming and going of then and now — how should that too ever be done with? The merchant boats cut and part the green cold waves; the fisherman's pipe blows the red evening light apart. The white heron stands exceedingly high on the bank of wild rice; the wild geese have all laid their schemes in the midst of the paddy fields. There is no one to carry on the old traces of Eomneung (嚴陵), and in the end I shall hold the misted waves to me and become an old man with a fishing rod.