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 · 95 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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: On the night of the fifteenth of the eighth month Xuanzong went with the Honored Consort to Taiye Pond and leaned on the railing to gaze at the moon, but he could not see it all, and the Emperor's heart was not glad. At last he gave command to those about him to raise, apart, a terrace a hundred feet high on the western bank of the pond, saying, "Next year the Consort and I shall look at the moon from it." Afterward he went through Lushan's soldiery and could not raise it again, and only the foundation was left.
良辰樂事喜參差。虛築高臺指後期。唯有年年秋夜月。一輪依舊掛天涯。
Good seasons and glad occasions are fond of going amiss;
to no purpose he raised a high terrace and set a day to come.
Only the moon of the autumn nights, year after year,
hangs its one round at the sky's edge as it always did.