Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14
Moved at the Stream by Gwibeopsa歸法寺川上有感。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 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
少小翩翩此慣遊。算來三十七年周。莫言川是人非舊。逝水無停豈昔流。
As a boy I roamed freely here and knew the place well; counting it up, thirty-seven years have come round. Do not say that the stream is the same and only the man is not what he was: the running water never stops, so how should it be the old water?
Interlinear notes 1
冠童趁歲夏課處也。予少年時。亦慣遊。
This is where the grown men and the boys did their summer studies year after year. In my youth I too roamed here often.
2Second Poem
白葛婆娑散髮遊。茂林深樾繞川周。少年蘸足浮盃處。病脚難堪暫下流。
Loosely wrapped in a white hempen robe, my hair unbound, I roam; the deep shade of the thick grove rings the bank of the stream. In the place where in my youth I soaked my feet and floated my cup, with sick legs I can hardly bear even to step down into the water for a moment.