Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
At Minister Gi's (奇尙書) Grove Pond, Matching the Rhymes of an Ancient奇尙書林塘次古人韻
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.
占斷千年地。新開一洞仙。池淸鋪淨練。笋逬走狂鞭。鸚鵡窺籠語。鴛鴦枕岸眠。炎光九十日。何日不秋天。
He has taken possession of a thousand-year ground, and newly opened a single immortals' valley. The pond is clear, as if clean silk were spread out; the bamboo shoots thrust up and run like wild whips. The parrot peers at its cage and talks; the mandarin ducks pillow the bank and sleep. Through all the ninety days of blazing heat, which day here is not an autumn sky?