Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 17
In the ninth month of that year, holding no office, I guarded Bojeong Gate (保定門) against the barbarian troops是年九月。因備禦胡兵。以白衣守保定門。
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.
白衣來作守門人。不憚長城晝夜巡。猶勝炎州嵐瘴地。折腰甘向海村民。
Holding no office I have come and become a gatekeeper And do not mind making the rounds of the long wall day and night It is still better than in that hot district, in the land of miasma (瘴氣) Bending my waist and taking it sweetly from the folk of a seaside town