Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 7
Answering His Poem on Lodging Alone in an Empty Guest-House和塊居空館
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 7 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.
右院閱人久。荒村得酒踈。詠詩驚谷鳥。投飯聚池魚。江寂潮廻後。山明日側初。春慵渾作癖。得句不須書。
Uwon (右院) has long known the passing of men, and the village being rough, wine comes but seldom. I chant a poem and the valley birds start; I throw out rice and the pond fish gather. The river is still because the tide has turned back; the hills are bright because the sun has just begun to slant. Spring idleness has become altogether a habit: even when I get a line, I do not trouble to write it down.