Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 8
Hearing the Sound of Wine Being Strained at Night夜聞汁酒聲。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 8 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.
君看簷端雨。終夜滴不止。徒爾破甘夢。聞之但猒耳。此亦眞雨聲。其聞何自喜。有利與無利。所以心如是。喜故聽不猒。所利飮而醉。雨亦滴旱天。未謂終無利。
Look you — the sound of rain at the edge of the eaves, dripping all night long without a stop. In vain it breaks only my sweet dreams, and to hear it merely wearies the ear. This too is truly the sound of rain, so why is this sound of itself a joy? Whether there is profit in a thing or none — that is why the heart is as it is. Being a joy, it does not weary me to hear; and the profit in it is to drink and be drunk. Rain too comes dripping down upon a parched sky, so in the end I cannot say it has no profit.