Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9
Written after Overseeing the Granary in Nangsan County朗山縣監倉後有作
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.
白花飛駱勝龍驤。行盡山邊一路長。郡吏來迎如老狖。村民走避似驚麞。千囷已猒觀紅腐。一斝何妨酌碧香。可愧昔年閑放客。參軍掌記又監倉。
The white-blossomed flying piebald is better than Longxiang (龍驤), yet go the whole mountainside, and the one road is long. The county clerks who come to greet me are like old monkeys, the villagers who run and hide like startled roe deer. I am sick already of looking at the red-rotted grain in a thousand stacks; what harm, then, in pouring the green fragrance into a single cup? Shameful it is — that the wanderer who once was idle and unbridled is Adjutant (參軍), Recorder (掌記), and overseer of the granary besides.