In the Second Month, Setting Out Again for Buryeong County, I Read Sochuk's Poem on Horseback and Use the Rhymes of the Tea Garden Poem to Set Down What I Saw二月。復指扶寧郡。馬上讀小畜詩。用茶園詩韻。記所見。
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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 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.
Sharing the cares of office, I have no idle day,
and riding the post horse I run across the plain.
Everywhere the flowers confuse the road,
and whose house is it where the bamboo has locked the garden?
Wisteria winds and holds up a fallen vine,
a locust tree has toppled and bared its solitary root.
The excellent carriage is as though it whipped a crane,
the light baggage might keep up with a monkey.
Over the lake sky the spring mist is dark,
at the southern tavern the sultry clouds are warm.
The moss comes alive and adds a new halo,
the tide runs wild and passes its old mark.
Entering the village I meet the Altar Day (社日) when the swallows come,
and looking out at the sea I ask after the turn of the turtles.
The old dyke opens its sluice at dawn,
the empty walled town shuts its gate even by day.
The county clerk comes to greet me and leads the way,
the county magistrate comes out and opens the wine jar.
All this struggling is the king's business,
and this merriment too is the king's grace.
By the sand a gull dances alone,
beyond the wood a bird knows how to speak.
Elders, do not take fright and hide away:
this scholar does not set himself up high.