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 · 80 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 6 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.
From of old I have had the sickness of Wenyuan (文園),
and in the height of summer I go far abroad again.
By way of trial I taste a bowl of tea,
and ice and snow enter my throat.
Resting again a little while on the pine-shaded floor,
I find my whole body already turned to autumn.
The boy servant does not understand at all,
and thinks it strange that I linger so long.
My nature is broad and level from the first,
and wherever I arrive I stay as I please.
Meeting a hollow, I may just as well stop;
riding a current, I may just as well float.
What harm in staying here,
and what should I seek by going there?
How great it is — within heaven and earth
my life has come to rest at its ease.