Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 2
On New Year's Day I Look Out at the Road (正日望路)正日望路
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 2 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.
謝官賀歲兩般人。終日奔馳一路塵。唯有忘懷遮老子。大拋人事作閑身。
Two sorts of men, those giving thanks for office and those giving New Year's greetings, race about all day long, and the whole road is dust. Only this old man, who has forgotten his cares, has thrown over the affairs of men entirely and become an idle body.
Interlinear notes 1
遮老子 — 遮 is taken as 這 (this), and so read as the author's way of pointing to himself. Read as the characters stand, it may also be rendered "that old man." — Translator