Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 13
Chanted by Chance on the River at Heungcheonsa — Two Poems興天寺江上偶吟二首
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.
1First Poem
碧水接天天接水。薄雲如霧霧如雲。村畦稻熟門前穫。野店機鳴路上聞。
The blue water touches the sky, and the sky touches the water; the thin clouds are like mist, and the mist like clouds. The rice on the village banks is ripe and is reaped before the gate; the sound of a loom in a field tavern is heard out on the road.
2Second Poem
灘迴山下水環山。山曲時時路隔灘。路入孤村殘日落。碧天雲破月如彎。
The rapids wind below the hills and the water rings the hills, and at every bend of the hills the road is now and then cut off by the rapids. The road enters a lonely village as the last of the sun goes down; the clouds part in the blue sky, and the moon is like a bent bow.