Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) 東國李相國集 · Yi Gyubo · Compiled 1241 (Goryeo, 28th year of King Gojong); revised and enlarged 1251 · 2 passages · 112 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
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.
Between a looking down and a looking up I am startled that the years change so often,
and after ten years are past I am still a mere student.
By chance I have come to the old temple and sought out the traces I left,
and instead I sit face to face with the high monk and talk of our old feeling.
In the evening light half hung in the sky, the shadows of flying birds;
in the autumn moon that fills the hills, the cold cry of the monkeys.
My deep-held thoughts are vexed and hard enough to set down,
and so from time to time I go down into the yard and walk where my feet take me.
What I get is scarcely the size of a hair, and what I lose is like a cliff;
for several years I was shut in a pen and walked to and fro in my wretchedness.
Now that the crane has got free, who shall tether it?
I console in some measure the startled monkey that waited for my coming back.
The old face I wore in the world of dust the wind has washed quite away,
and at the new hermitage by the misted stream the moon comes out to meet me.
Monk of the hills, do not ask the purpose of my coming back to the hills:
a floating name no bigger than an inch of grass — what use is there for it?