Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 6
Written on Seeing the Snow Piled Before My Gate in the Eleventh Month十一月見門前雪積有作
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.
門前雪三尺。銀嶺何嶙峋。兒寒不遑戲。誰肯輥爲輪。不杜門猶閉。尙無一箇人。倦僕且暫掃。略開線路新。袁安若不死。會有唁來賓。
Three feet of snow before the gate— how high this silver ridge stands! The children are too cold to find time for play, so who would roll it into a ball the size of a wheel? The gate, though I do not shut it, has shut of itself, and not one person has yet come. A weary servant swept a while and barely opened a new path thin as a thread. If Yuan An (袁安) had not died, I too would have a guest coming to console me.
Interlinear notes 1
輥爲輪 — some read this as meaning to roll the snow into the shape of a cartwheel. — the translator