Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 3
Three Songs of the Thatched Hall — The Plain Geomungo草堂三詠 素琴
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 3 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.
天籟初無聲。散作萬竅鳴。孤桐本自靜。假物成摐琤。我愛素琴上。一曲流水淸。不要知音聞。不忌俗耳聽。只爲寫我情。聊弄一再行。曲終又靜默。敻與古意冥。
The voice of heaven has no sound of its own, yet scattered abroad it sounds in ten thousand hollows. The lone paulownia is of itself quite still, yet borrowing a thing it makes a ringing note. Upon my plain geomungo I love one air, the clearness of running water. I do not hope that a knower of the tune (知音) will hear it, nor do I mind a vulgar ear hearing it. Only to draw out what I feel I toy a little with a strain or two. When the air is done I am still and wordless again, and far off I become one with the mind of the ancients.