Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1
Singing on Behalf of the Farmer代農夫吟
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.
帶雨鋤禾伏畝中。形容醜黑豈人容。王孫公子休輕侮。富貴豪奢出自儂。
Weeding the rice in the rain, bent down between the furrows, our shape is black and ugly — how is it the shape of a man? You young lords and sons of dukes, do not make light of us: all your wealth and rank and lavish ease come out of us.
Interlinear notes 1
二首
Two poems.
新穀靑靑猶在畝。縣胥官吏已徵租。力耕富國關吾輩。何苦相侵剝及膚。
The new grain is green and still standing in the fields, yet the district clerks and officers are already collecting the tax. Ploughing hard to make the country rich hangs upon our hands — why then harass us so, and go so far as to flay our very skin?