Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 16
Impromptu in the Eastern Fields東郊卽事
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.
三尺藍輿取次行。池南池北稱幽情。黑雲將雨環山過。綠麥搖風際岸平。出沒游魚欺白鷺。高低輕燕護黃鶯。野庵不敢鼓門訪。恐使閑人費送迎。
Riding a three-foot open palanquin (藍輿), I go along in turn; south of the pond and north of the pond suit a secluded mood. The dark clouds drive the rain and pass around the mountain, and the green barley, swayed by the wind, lies level all the way to the hill. The fish, now surfacing and now sinking, deceive the white egret, and the light swallows, flying high and low, keep guard over the oriole. At the hermitage in the fields I dare not knock and call, for I fear to put them to the trouble of seeing off and greeting an idle man.