Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3
The Next Day a Great Rain Fell, and I Wrote Again (明日大雨復作)明日大雨復作
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.
昨日題詩今日雨。初疑天自答予心。翻思此是吾君力。豈爲微臣冷淡吟。
I wrote a poem yesterday, and today the rain comes; at first I thought heaven had answered my heart. Thinking it over, this is the power of our sovereign — how should it be for a lowly subject's insipid humming?
Interlinear notes 1
四月三十日
This was the last day of the fourth month.
美矣佳哉雨散毛。每霑隨作萬民膏。民膏又肉君臣體。願念農家一日勞。
Beautiful and good — the rain scatters like fine hairs, and wherever it wets, it becomes at once the fat of the myriad people. And the people's fat in turn fattens the bodies of sovereign and subject; I pray you, consider the farmhouse's single day of toil.