Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 6
On the Seventh Day of the Fifth Month of the Gihae Year (己亥) the Spring at My House Flowed Again, and I Made Five Poems of Question and Answer in Jest — The Spring Answers the Master己亥五月七日。家泉復出。戲成問答五首。 泉答主人
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 6 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.
盤廻縈屈石中間。罅出方成一掬瀾。地下泉流多少在。何憂不及此時看。
Winding and coiling, I lay curled among the stones, and coming out through a crack I have made at last a handful of waves. How much of the spring's flow is still left beneath the earth — why do you worry that you will not see it as you do now?