Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 1
Plum Blossom梅花
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.
庾嶺侵寒拆凍脣。不將紅粉損天眞。莫敎驚落羌兒笛。好待來隨驛使塵。帶雪更粧千點雪。先春偸作一番春。玉肌尙有淸香在。竊藥恒娥月裏身。
On the Yu Range (庾嶺) it braves the cold and bursts its frozen lips, not marring with red powder the trueness it was born with. Do not let it be startled into falling by the flute of a barbarian boy; let it wait to come along with the dust of the post-station courier. Wearing the snow, it adorns itself again with a thousand points of snow; going before the spring, it secretly makes a spring of its own. On its flesh like jade a clear fragrance still lingers: it is Hang-a (姮娥), who stole the drug, in her body within the moon.