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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 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.
露嚲煙低無恨思。絮狂絲亂不勝春。其如南北東西路。惱殺古今來往人。
Drooping with dew, lowered by mist, it had no bitter thoughts;
now its catkins run wild and its thread-like boughs tangle — it cannot bear the spring.
What is to be done, when on the roads running north and south, east and west,
it torments to death the travelers coming and going, then as now?
Interlinear notes 1
三首
Three poems.
蘇娘宅畔宜相見。焬帝堤邊不忍看。自緣人意有分別。彼此春光揔一般。
By Su Niang's (蘇娘) house they are worth looking upon,
but by Emperor Yang's (煬帝) embankment I cannot bear to look.
It is only because the human heart itself makes the distinction;
here and there, the light of spring is all one and the same.
好事春風歲歲廻。無端吹綠柳條新。都門一見腸猶斷。何況情人折贈春。
The meddlesome spring wind returns year after year,
and blows for no reason, turning the willow boughs green anew.
A single glance at them by the capital gate already breaks the bowels —
how much more when one dear to me breaks off the spring and gives it to me?