Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 17
On the seventh of the fourth month, chanted again四月七日又吟
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.
枿座無言又落暉。自驚腰帶漸寬圍。猒聞林雀窺蛇噪。默見菁蟲化蝶飛。度日唯應書咄咄。向人終不道非非。此生已是知幾晚。何悔靑山不早歸。
I sit on a stump without a word, and the sun goes down again And I am startled myself at how my belt has slackened I hate to hear the wood sparrows chattering as they spy on a snake And watch without a word the cabbage worm turn butterfly and fly Passing the days, I only write 「tut, tut (咄咄)」 And never in the end call another man wrong, wrong In this life I was already late in reading the signs So why should I repent not going back early to the green hills