Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 16
Chanting the Snow on the Road — Two Poems路上詠雪二首
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 16 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.
1The first poem
學花工翦刻。解舞巧徘徊。我鬢曾渾白。何須更點來。
It is skilled at learning from flowers to cut and carve, and knowing how to dance, it wheels about with craft. The hair at my temples is already wholly white — why must you come to dot it once again?
2The second poem
初愛輕飄袂。都忘備障身。漸堆寒弁重。翻羨笠簦人。
At first I loved how lightly it blew upon my sleeves, and quite forgot to prepare any cover for my body. As it heaped up and my cold cap grew heavy, I came instead to envy the man in a rain-hat.