Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 9
From Gobu I Enter Geumgu County at Night and Write on the Wall自古阜夜入金溝縣。書壁上。
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.
凌晨離古阜。侵夜入金溝。貪吏猶逃鼠。愚民似沐猴。月華淸可掬。嵐色遠如流。鳧舃歸何處。蛾眉獨笑留。
Braving the dawn I left Gobu, and pressing on into the night I enter Geumgu. The greedy clerks are still like fleeing rats, the foolish people like capped monkeys. The moonlight is clear enough to scoop up, the colour of the mountain haze is far off, as though it flowed. Where have the duck shoes gone back to? Only the fair brows stay behind, smiling alone.
Interlinear notes 1
時縣令不在。
At that time there was no county magistrate.