Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 6

Thinking of Home思家

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 · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 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.

鴈信方三到。蟾輪已五虧。荒蘺殘露菊。寒樹爛霜梨。最憶鵶頭女。還懷犀角兒。城東一區宅。誰肯葺茅茨。

Word by the wild geese has come three times now, and the wheel of the moon has waned five times already. By the rough hedge the dew-struck chrysanthemums remain; on the cold tree the frost-struck pears have ripened soft. What I think of most is my daughter with her crow-black head, and what I long for besides is my son with his rhinoceros-horn brow. That house on its one plot east of the walls — who will mend its thatch of reeds?