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 · 4 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
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
一隻針鉤當耒鋤。豐年但卜海饒魚。農耕千畝猶艱食。沙戶尋常有宿儲。
A single fishhook takes the place of plough and hoe,
and a good year is foretold only by the fish being many in the sea.
Though a man plough a thousand furrows he may still find it hard to eat,
yet the house on the sandbar always has something laid by from before.
Interlinear notes 1
四首
There are four poems.
2Second Poem
一世生涯付釣臺。江村日落醉扶廻。自言有酒何憂佐。灘下群魚作膾來。
He entrusts a lifetime's living to the fishing ground,
and when the sun goes down over the river village he comes home drunk and held up.
He says himself that if there is wine, why worry about the relish:
the fish in the shallows below, he says, come up as slices for the plate.
3Third Poem
荻花風亂暮江寒。細雨蓑衣宿淺灘。辛苦烟波少閑態。侯家屛障畫形看。
The wind is wild in the reed flowers and the darkening river is cold;
in the drizzle, wrapped in a straw cape, he sleeps on the shallow rapids.
He suffers in mist and wave and has little of the look of leisure,
yet on the screens of a marquis's house (侯家) that very look is painted.
4Fourth Poem
江湖放浪作閑民。猶笑公侯富貴身。爾笑世人人亦笑。渭川還有釣周人。
Drifting on rivers and lakes he has become an idle commoner,
and still he laughs at the rich and noble persons of dukes and marquises.
If you laugh at the people of the world, the people will laugh at you too:
on the River Wei as well there was one who fished up the house of Zhou.