Written While Lodging in the West Wing of the Guest House at Haeum (河陰)寓河陰客舍西廊有作
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
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.
新京構屋日滋多。猶似千蚕競作窠。我豈孤獐堪野處。河陰官舍借爲家。
In the new capital the building of houses increases by the day,
like a thousand silkworms vying to spin their cocoons.
How could I, like a solitary roe deer, live out in the fields?
I borrowed the government lodge at Haeum and made it my home.
Interlinear notes 1
移都後。予獨於新京未構屋。擧家借河陰客館西廊居之。累月乃去。
After the capital was moved, I alone could not build a house in the new capital, so my whole household borrowed the west wing of the guest house at Haeum and lived there, leaving only after several months.
數間虛館借西偏。榛莽深深碧峀邊。瓢飮自寬聊勉耳。從今始有僞顔淵。
Borrowing the west corner of a few empty bays of the guest house,
deep in the thickets, at the edge of a green peak.
With one gourd-dipper of water I count myself rich enough and merely endure —
and from now on there is at last a false Yan Yuan (顔淵).
Interlinear notes 1
時受祿未周。屢在陳。
At that time I had not been drawing my stipend a full year, and provisions often ran out.