Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3
Gladdened by the Sweet Rain喜雨
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 3 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.
經春久作屯膏吝。到夏方施霈澤新。入地未深君莫歉。一犂猶活萬千人。
All through the passing of spring it was long sparing and stingy with its bounty, and only on reaching summer does it grant a new rain that satisfies. Do not be put out that it has not soaked deep into the ground; even one plowshare's depth keeps the ten thousand people alive.
Interlinear notes 1
二首○四月十七日
Two poems. ○ This was the seventeenth day of the fourth month.
將抽菜甲抽何捷。已綠林梢綠更新。久渴膏恩甘受濕。深憎路上笠簦人。
The vegetable sprouts were about to come up, and how fast they come up now! At the grove's edge, already green, the green is newer still. Long thirsty for bounty, I take the wetting gladly, but the man on the road in a rain hat holding an umbrella is most hateful.