Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 17
Dreary rain苦雨
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.
逐客難自由。遠遊非所擬。往來村巷間。尙足寬愁思。霪雨鎖不開。平地數尺水。出門猶不得。窘若在籠裏。此是囚中囚。憂豈一段耳。多方以侵之。然後使我死。
A driven-out traveler can hardly be free of himself And roaming far is not for him to reckon on Just to go back and forth among the village lanes Was still enough to ease my cares a little But the long rains have locked me in and will not open And the water stands some feet deep on level ground I cannot so much as step out of the gate And am as cramped as if I were in a cage This is a prisoner within a prisoner And how should my troubles be of one kind only Only after they have harried me In every way, will they let me die