Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
On the Cold Food Day, Moved by What Befell Ja Chu寒食感子推事
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 1 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.
衆鱗化雲雨。一蛇不與爭。未見恩波潤。反爲燥炭烹。綿山山上火。已忍焚人英。胡不放神燄。焚滅千載名。遂使後代人。聞名輒傷情。每至百五辰。萬屋禁煙生。不及炎岡日。一勺江水淸。
The many scales were turned to clouds and rain, but one snake did not contend for it. He never saw the wave of favor wet him, and was instead boiled over dry charcoal. The fire upon Mount Myeon (綿山) had already borne to burn the flower of a man. Why then was the spirit flame not loosed to burn away his name of a thousand years as well? In the end it has made the men of later ages, at the mere hearing of his name, be wounded at heart. Every year, when the hundred and fifth day comes, ten thousand houses are forbidden to raise smoke. On that day on the burning ridge of the hill, not one ladleful of clear river water reached him.