Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 16
On the Fourteenth Day of the Eighth Month, After Bowing at the Ancestral Graves, Written at the Rock Spring and Shown to Yi Baeksun, Rectifier of Omissions (補闕)八月十四日。拜先壙後題巖泉。示李補闕百順。
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.
石間流水本無情。豈恥世人來濯足。我緣世上埃垢重。脚未下泉先愧恧。待渠洗了足底塵。下手無慙弄澄綠。
The water flowing among the stones has of itself no feelings, so why should it be ashamed that worldly men come to wash their feet? Because the dust and grime of the world lie heavy upon me, I am ashamed first, before ever dipping my feet in the spring. I shall wait for that water to wash away all the dust beneath my feet, and then without shame put in my hand and play with the clear green water.