Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9
On a Day in the Twelfth Month, Setting Out for the First Time to Byeonsan in Buryeong County on Timber-Felling Business, Composed on Horseback十二月日。因斫木初指扶寧郡邊山。馬上作。
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.
權在擁軍榮可詫。官呼斫木辱堪知。邊山自古稱天府。好揀長材備棟欀。
My authority lies in commanding troops, so the glory might be boasted of, but the post is called 「Timber-Felling Commissioner」, so I know the disgrace of it. Byeonsan has from of old been called Heaven's storehouse, so I must pick out the long timbers well and furnish beams and pillars.
Interlinear notes 2
二首
Two poems.
呼爲斫木使。故云。
I was called the Timber-Felling Commissioner (斫木使), and so spoke thus.
一聲鼓角鳥驚飛。病㥘寒威裂厚衣。駐盖鴈川觀雪漲。卸鞍犬浦待潮歸。
At one blast of drum and horn the birds start up in flight, and being ill, I fear the cold's force will tear my thick clothes. At Ancheon (鴈川) I halt my parasol and watch the snow grown deeper; at Gyeonpo (犬浦) I loosen the saddle and wait for the flood tide to turn back.