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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 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.
My little daughter had a face like snow,
and her cleverness was hard to tell in full.
At two she was already speaking,
more clearly than a parrot's tongue.
At three she seemed to be shy before others,
and even at play she did not cross the threshold.
This year, at barely four,
she had come to know something of needlework.
Why was she taken from us and sent back?
Suddenly, as a startling flash of lightning dies away.
The spring nestling fell before it was fully grown,
and now at last I see that the dove's nest was clumsily made.
I, who have studied the Way, am a little more at ease,
but when will my wife's weeping end?
I look out into the midst of the field,
where the grain sprouts have just come up;
if wind and hail come down out of season,
they beat the ground and all are broken and gone.
The Maker has already given them birth,
and the Maker takes them cruelly away again.
What constancy was there ever in withering and flourishing?
Change seems rather to be a trick.
Going and coming are all of them empty,
and that is the end of it: from now on it is parting.