Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14
On a Day in the Fourth Month of the Gimyo Year, Having Been Made Magistrate of Gyeyang, I Wrote This as I Was About to Cross the Jogang己卯四月日。得桂陽守。將渡祖江有作。
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.
晚山煙瞑水漫漫。灘險風狂得渡難。命薄如今遭謫去。尙難拚却望長安。
On the darkening hills the mist is dim and the water far off; the rapids are rough and the wind fierce, and it is hard to cross. My lot is thin, and now I go off as though into banishment; yet the heart that gazes toward Jang'an is still hard to shake off.