Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 15
At the Geumju Guest House, Rhyming after a Lyric Left by Son, Secretariat Drafter衿州客舍。次孫舍人留題詞韻。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 15 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.
衿州好春景一何奇。芍藥嬌多工媚嫵。海棠眠重正欹垂。把酒惜芳時。皐壤沃膏潤賴潭池。俗習雖同齊土緩。居民多似老臺熙。飢飽卜安危。
How strange it is, the fine spring scenery of Geumju. The peony has loveliness in plenty and is skilled at putting on charm; the flowering quince, heavy with sleep, has just now tilted and hung down. I take up the wine and cherish the time of blossom. That the slopes and fields are rich is owed to the soaking of the pond water. The customs here are easygoing as in the land of Qi, and the people who live here are much like those who made merry on the old terrace (臺). By their hunger or their fullness one divines whether the times are safe or perilous.