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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 8 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.
Along the eaves the rain comes pouring down,
shaking my ears as if to hinder sleep.
How is it that within the sound of rain
the taste of sleep is everywhere so fine?
When it clears, though I keep my gate shut,
the wish to ride out does not cease.
For this my dreams can hardly ripen,
and out of light sleep I sometimes start awake.
Only in the long monsoon rains
does the whole road turn to water,
so that though I would seek one dear to me,
a step away is a thousand li.
At the gate no guest knocks at the wicket;
in the yard there is no sound of a person's shoes.
And so I come by sleep,
and snore away rumbling like thunder.
This taste is truly hard to tell;
how should kings and lords obtain it?
Kings and lords — why should they not?
But how can the court audience be put off?