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 · 128 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 3 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.
The common fishes are cramped and have no gifts,
and when the common painters set brush to them they come out much alike.
The carp's changes are full of wonder,
and without a divine brush it is hard to paint its likeness.
It leaps across deep rivers and flies over mountains,
with a head like an iron helmet and the wings and teeth of a gyu-dragon (虬).
How could one paint it mounting like thunder, leaping like lightning?
Qin Gao (琴高) alone drove it and went down into the water.
Some weigh more than a thousand geun, and some have blue markings,
and on all their thirty-six scales there are black marks.
Lord Jeong's breast is wide as river and sea,
and he has raised some hundreds of these divine fish.
The silk he swept over at one stroke is barely ten lengths,
yet black colt and red courser are mingled there with yellow pheasant.
Beside the eye the strength breaks out, and there is a stubborn will in it,
as though it hid within the seal-script character eul (乙).
I am afraid of this: that when the peach-blossom waves beat at the sky
it will go in at the Dragon Gate (龍門), burn its tail, and suddenly fly up.
Interlinear notes 4
鄭得恭所畫
It was painted by Jeong Deukgong (鄭得恭).
陶隱居云。鯉魚能神變。乃至飛越山湖。
Tao the Recluse (陶隱居) said that the carp changes by divine power, and even flies over mountains and lakes.
皆鯉名
These are all names for the carp.
鯉目旁。有骨如篆乙字。
Beside the carp's eye there is a bone like the seal-script character eul (乙).