Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 10
Chance Lines by the River at Sapyeong沙平江上偶吟
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.
落帆江口久踟躕。俯鑑澄波默數鬚。草合岸邊纔沒鸛。潮來汀際似迎鳧。篙工坐識水深淺。沙戶能占風有無。急覓霜縑須畫去。一雙閑鴨睡殘蘆。
At the river mouth I lowered sail and long lingered, stooping to mirror myself in the clear waves, silently counting my whiskers. On the grassy bank a stork is barely buried from sight, and the shore where the tide comes in seems to welcome the ducks. The boatman sits and knows the water's depth and shallowness, and the folk of the sand village can divine whether there will be wind. I must hurry and find white silk and paint it away — a pair of idle ducks dozing among the withered reeds.