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 · 102 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 4 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 Yishi (遺事) says: Whenever summer came, the Honored Consort would always wear thin silk gauze and have her maids fan her by turns, yet even so she could not be rid of the heat. Each time she sweated, the sweat was red and smooth and much perfumed. If she wiped it on a kerchief, its color was red as peach blossom. Again, the Xuanzong yilu (玄宗遺錄) says that when the Honored Consort hanged herself at Mawei (馬嵬), Gao Lishi reported and presented the silk that had wrapped her throat, and the traces of tears upon it were all like thin blood.
弱質難堪夏日遲。玉顔霑汗滴燕脂。那知一點紅桃色。却是香羅濺血期。
Her tender body could hardly bear the slowness of a summer day,
and on her jade-like face the damp sweat fell like rouge.
How could she have known that one dot of red peach-blossom color
would instead become the hour when blood spattered on perfumed silk?