Chanted at Dawn on the Tenth of the Seventh Month, Shown to Donggoja七月十日曉吟有感。示東皐子。
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 · 1 passages · 130 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 2 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.
A poet is by nature full of feeling
and at a single leaf he is already startled by autumn
Though they say some heat is left
when dawn comes he thinks of a thick fur robe
Yesterday I bathed in the southern stream
and swam like a floating gull
this morning, seeing the stream so blue
I rather shrink from going near the clear water
The season alters a little more each day
and the running years go and do not stay
Tomorrow is not today
and black hair will become white hair
My life is only a lodging as a guest
and the hundred years are about to come to an end
Why then do I hesitate so long like a rat
and not plan early for going forward or withdrawing?
And so in the inch-wide ground of my heart
I have piled up this endless care
Strive, strive at your first intent
spit on your hands and win rank as duke or marquis (公侯)
If that cannot be, go back to the clothes you began in
work hard at farming and make field labor your business
Brew a hundred bushels of wine each year
and grow old your whole life on the hill of wine-lees
Once dead and turned to earth beneath the pines
the noble and the base are all one tally-stick