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 · 130 Chinese characters · reading time 1.3 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 10 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.
Fine, fine fur, a pale blue-green,
round, round eyes, a deep green.
Its form may be matched with a tiger cub,
and its voice already frightens the mice of the house.
I prop it up with a cord of red thread
and feed it on sparrow meat.
Shaking out its claws, at first it leapt and trampled;
wagging its tail, little by little it grows tame.
Long ago, trusting that my house was poor,
in my middle years I did not keep you.
The mice ran about as they pleased,
and with sharp snouts were skilled at holing the house.
They gnawed the clothes in the chest
and made them into ragged little scraps.
In broad day they fought on my desk
and made me spill the water of my inkstone.
I hated their madness bitterly
and meant to draw up the case of Zhang Tang (張湯).
They ran too nimbly to be caught,
and I chased them round the walls in vain.
Since you have been in my house
the pack of mice has already drawn in.
How should it be only the walls that are whole?
You also preserve the peck and bushel I have stored.
I urge you: do not eat your food for nothing,
but strive to wipe out this tribe entirely.