Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 12
Lodging in the Mountains山中寓居
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 12 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.
欲試高人心。入山先醉奰。了不見喜慍。始覺眞高士。
To test the heart of a lofty man I went into the mountains, got drunk first, and raged. He showed neither pleasure nor anger at all; only then did I see he was truly a lofty scholar.
Interlinear notes 1
三首
Three poems.
道人雖灰心。亦愛詞人詞。幽庭不掃葉。請我遍題詩。
Though the man of the Way has a heart gone cold as ashes, he loves a poet's writing all the same. He leaves the leaves of his quiet courtyard unswept and asks me to write poems all over them.
高巓不敢上。不是憚躋攀。恐將山中眼。乍復望塵寰。
I do not dare climb to the high summit, and it is not that I shrink from the climbing. I fear that with eyes made in the mountains I might suddenly look out on the dusty world again.