Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 10
Written at a Small Village at the Mouth of the Inlet題浦口小村
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.
流水聲中暮復朝。海村籬落苦蕭條。湖淸巧印當心月。浦闊貪呑入口潮。古石浪舂平作礪。壞舡苔沒臥成橋。江山萬景吟難狀。須倩丹靑畫筆描。
Amid the sound of running water it darkens and dawns again, and the fences of the sea village are bitterly desolate. The lake being clear, it deftly prints the moon at its very heart; the inlet being wide, it greedily swallows the tide that enters its mouth. The old stones, pounded by the waves, have been made flat into whetstones; the broken boat, sunk under moss, lies there and has become a bridge. The ten thousand scenes of river and hill are hard to figure in chanting: I must borrow a painter's brush of red and blue to draw them.