Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
Given to the Monk Min (敏師)贈敏師
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.
靑山萬里拄筇行。餘事能詩繼二淸。雙眼曉隨溪水碧。一身秋與嶺雲輕。繞床虎吼獰風散。入鉢龍蜿白氣生。本欲避人人自識。他年僧傳肯逃名。
Staff in hand he walks ten thousand li of green mountains; as a pastime he excels at poetry, carrying on the two Cheongs (淸). His two eyes at dawn are blue along the stream water, his one body in autumn light as the clouds on the ridge. A tiger roars about his couch, and the fierce wind scatters; a dragon stirs in his begging bowl, and a white vapor rises. He meant from the first to avoid people, yet people know him of themselves — in later days, can he escape his name in the Biographies of Monks (僧傳)?