Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 10
Shutting My Gate杜門
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.
爲避人間謗議騰。杜門高臥髮鬅鬙。初如蕩蕩懷春女。漸作寥寥結夏僧。兒戱牽衣聊足樂。客來敲戶不須應。窮通榮辱皆天賦。斥鷃何曾羨大鵬。
To escape the boiling up of slander in the human world, I have shut my gate and lain high, my hair gone tangled. At first I was swaying like a girl who longs for spring, and little by little became a lonely monk gone into the summer retreat. My child tugs at my clothes in play, and that is joy enough; a guest comes and knocks at the door, and there is no need to answer. Straits and success, glory and disgrace are all given by heaven: when did the quail ever envy the great Peng bird (鵬)?