Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 5

Thanking One Who Gave Me a Fan謝人惠扇

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 · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 5 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.

交情淡若水。團扇皎如霜。不夜月長滿。先秋風自凉。

The feeling between friends is plain as water, and the round fan is white as frost. It is not night, yet the moon is always full; autumn has not come, yet a wind is cool of itself.

Interlinear notes 1

二首

Two poems.

君心眞似氷。相對洗煩鬱。更贈一襟秋。留爲雙手月。

Your heart is truly like ice, and facing it, my stifling is washed away. Again you give me autumn enough to fill my breast, and I keep it in my two hands as a moon.