Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 11

Visiting the Monk Gagwol, Each of Us Composing to Dongpo's Rhymes訪覺月師。用東坡詩韻各賦。

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 11 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.

步步行隨入谷雲。自然幽洞辟紅塵。已將蚊雀觀鐘釜。曾把螟蛉戱搢紳。俯仰歸來推幻化。死生得喪任天鈞。多師雪裏猶賖酒。借與山中一日春。

Step by step I follow the clouds that enter the valley, and of itself the secluded glen drives off the red dust. Already with mosquito and sparrow I have looked upon bell and cauldron, and once with the mason wasp I made sport of the officeholders. Looking down and looking up, I come back and reckon the empty changes, and leave dying and living, gaining and losing, to the wheel of heaven. Thanks to the monk, who even in the snow fetched wine on credit and lends me one day of spring within the mountains.