Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9

At the House of Gi the Minister (尙書), on an Angry Monkey奇尙書宅賦怒猿

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 1 passages · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 9 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.

猿公有何嗔。人立向我嘷。爾思巴峽月。猒絆朱門高。我戀碧山隱。浪受紅塵勞。我與爾同病。胡爲厲聲咆。

Master Monkey, at what are you angry, that you stand like a man and howl at me? You must be thinking of the moon over the Ba Gorges (巴峽), and loathing to be tied up high at a vermilion gate. I long for a hiding place in the green mountains, yet vainly take on the toil of the red dust. You and I have the same illness — why then do you raise your voice and growl?