Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6
Going by Boat舟行
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.
江海浩無際。烟濤千里碧。終日在湖中。久統泛舟役。舊羨畫屛人。今作屛中客。波搖碎明月。水落出孤石。商船一葉去。杳杳何處適。行入蘆花洲。林霧翠滴滴。頭輕肌髮凉。不覺沈痾䆁。
River and sea are wide without end, and the misted waves are green for a thousand li. All the day long I am in the middle of the lake, having long taken up the business of setting a boat afloat. Once I envied the man inside the painted screen, and now I have become the traveler inside the screen. The waves shake and break the bright moon, and the water falls away and a lone rock shows. A merchant boat drifts by like a single leaf — far off, where is it going? Going on, I enter a sandbar of reed flowers, where the mist of the thickets beads up green. My head is light, my skin and hair are cool, and I did not know that my deep illness had loosened.