Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 17
Reading the Book of Changes讀易
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.
屈指行年僅六旬。方觀易象讀千巡。乾坤摠入胸襟內。朝是凡夫暮已神。
Counting on my fingers, my years are barely sixty, and only now have I looked at the images of the Changes (易) and read them a thousand times. Heaven and earth have all come into my breast; at morning I was an ordinary man, and by evening already I am wondrous.
Interlinear notes 1
晚好易。至背書遙誦。
In his late years he loved the Book of Changes, and came to the point of reciting it with his back to the book.