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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 1 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.
Riding a donkey, I barely cross the pass,
and the county pillows its head on the green river's brow.
This water country seems Penglai isle set down here,
the houses as though dwelling in Wozhou (沃州).
The shape of the land is like a running tiger,
the set of the hills like a rising hornless dragon.
Already I have shed the calamity of the capital,
and now I break off, too, my roaming on the traveler's road.
The kinsmen of my home village look up the household registers,
and the farm ridges ask after my forebears' fields.
I set out wine and call the old man of the fields,
asking him diligently for schemes to put strength into the farming.
Interlinear notes 1
二首
Two poems.
草草事行李。茫茫涉梗艱。燎鬚隨病妺。扇枕憶慈顔。上國風塵暗。南州日月閑。此邦堪土著。端稱養踈頑。
In haste I made ready my baggage
and crossed the far and rugged road.
Singeing my whiskers, I followed my sick sister;
I think of my mother's face, who once fanned my pillow.
In the capital the wind and dust are dark;
in the southern county the days and months are at leisure.
This district is fit to settle down in,
truly suited to the nourishing of a dull and idle body.