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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 11 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.
臘梅秋菊巧侵寒。輕薄春紅已莫干。及見此花專四序。一時偏艶不堪看。
The twelfth-month plum and the autumn chrysanthemum cunningly brave the cold,
and the frivolous red flowers of spring cannot venture upon it at all.
Now that I have seen this flower hold all four seasons for its own,
what is lovely for one season only is not worth the looking.
Interlinear notes 1
三首
Three poems.
好許千花伴爾榮。一春歸後可堪爭。吳姬楚艶紛紛散。歲久方知靜女情。
A thousand flowers may well be allowed to share your glory,
but once the one spring has gone, how could they contend with you?
The girls of Wu and the beauties of Chu scatter in confusion,
and only when the years grow long does one know a chaste woman's heart.
松眞竹悍小柔姿。跨涉炎寒也自宜。爾與春紅同一樣。如何猶到雪霜時。
The pine is true and the bamboo is tough, but they lack a little softness of form;
that they pass across both heat and cold is fitting of itself.
You are of one shape with the red flowers of spring —
how is it that you last on even into the season of snow and frost?