Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 7
Written on Seeing Rice Grown of Itself beside the South Veranda of My Bedchamber見穭稻生寢房南軒之旁。有作。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 7 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.
人皆務耕田。歲入幾許斛。我家無是事。天遣生穭穀。庭階生亦可。胡柰寢房曲。亦復效田禾。擢穗數莖綠。我病慵不芟。憎哉游手僕。置之百不訶。默笑但瞪目。業已不理屋。何獨於此督。
Everyone sets to ploughing the fields and reaps some few measures year by year; in my house there is no such thing, so Heaven has sent grain that grew of itself. Had it come up in the yard or on the steps it would still be well enough, but why at the corner of my bedchamber? And, aping the rice of the fields, a few stalks have pushed out green ears. I am ill and idle and cannot cut it, and hateful are the servants who let their hands lie idle! Still I leave it be and do not scold them in the least, but smile without a word and only gaze blankly at it. Since the house itself is not tidied, why press them over this alone?