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 · 1 passages · 140 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
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.
Entering the mountains I lost the path and fell into the thickets;
in the empty valley the secluded flowers bloom and fall of themselves.
The water running in the deep stream is half a leg of the mountain,
and the lone cloud on the cliff is one handful of sky.
Leaping up some hundreds of feet of sheer rock,
my body travels the treetops and vies with the gibbons.
Geugam (戟巖) gathers its blades — whom does it mean to strike?
The Drum Rock has no sound — how should one beat it to make it ring?
The wind blows on my worldly face as if sweeping it clean,
and the valley answers a man's voice as if saying, "Yes, yes."
At first I walked the stone path, up and down over the bumps,
then soon went to the pine wicket gate and knocked, tap tap.
The mountain monk came out the gate and met his guest with a smile,
his figure antique as a thousand-year crane at the tip of a pine.
Weary, I lay on the pine-plank floor, and the mountain moon was white;
we did not even ask that the rock spring was running dry from the boiling of tea.
I said I was glad and had forgotten care, and the Zen master laughed aloud:
there was no care to begin with, so what is gladness?
Tomorrow morning it is enough to wax Ruan Fu's (阮孚) clogs together —
why buy again the straw sandals of Taochui (桃椎)?
Interlinear notes 2
白巖如戟人號戟巖。
A white rock is like a spear, so people call it Geugam.