Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6
The Second of the Eighth Month八月二日
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.
食罷禪房暫啜茶。半山紅日已西斜。坐呼階畔馴人鶴。臥聽門前警盜鵝。萬柳影中南北路。一溪聲外兩三家。卒然得句聊題壁。寄語闍梨莫羃紗。
Having finished the meal, I drink a little tea in the meditation hall, and the red sun at the hill's middle has already leaned to the west. Sitting, I call the crane beside the stone steps that is tame with people; lying, I hear the goose before the gate that gives warning of thieves. A road north and south within the shadows of ten thousand willows; two or three houses beyond the sound of one stream's water. Suddenly I get a couplet and write it on the wall for its own sake, and I tell the monk: do not cover it over with silk.