Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6
Composed on Horseback馬上有作
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 6 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.
一別水仙鄕。騰裝適南荒。六月行萬里。白汗翻如漿。行疲又上馬。上馬睡欲僵。渴飮山下泉。泉水極探湯。童奴喘不息。屢擇樹陰凉。幸非就國者。行李不須忙。
Once I had left the district of the water immortals, I packed my baggage for the rough land of the south. In the sixth month I go ten thousand li, and white sweat turns over like thin gruel. Worn out with walking, I mount the horse again; mounted, I all but topple over with drowsiness. Thirsty, I drink at a spring below the hill, and the spring water is as though one groped in water at a hard boil. The boy servant pants and cannot catch his breath and keeps choosing out the cool shade of the trees. Luckily I am not one going to take up a post in a fief, so there is no need to hurry my baggage along.