Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 17
On the Road Through a River Village江村路中
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 17 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
野翁歸處牛將犢。漁父眠時鷺得魚。立岸貪看江浩浩。隈松暫避雨疏疏。
Where the old man of the fields goes home, the cow leads her calf; when the fisherman dozes, the egret gets a fish. Standing on the bank I look my fill at the wide, wide river, and at a bend of the pines I shelter a while from the thin rain.
Interlinear notes 1
二首
Two poems.
2The Second
沙村計活付魚灘。任却膏田化葦萑。唯有巖僧嫌地曠。一肩高耒勉耕山。
The sand village hangs its living upon the fishing shallows, and leaves the rich fields alone to become a reed bed. Only the monk of the rocks dislikes that the ground lies empty, and with a plow high on his shoulder toils at tilling the mountain.
Interlinear notes 1
勉一作遍。
For "myeon" (勉), some versions have "pyeon" (遍).