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 · 90 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.
In my house there is one pot,
long kept amid the frying and the boiling.
Last year one of its legs broke,
and this year another toe broke off.
Only one leg is left to it,
and whatever it meets, it likes to lean upon.
Of him who offered up jade and had his feet cut off twice,
the affair of He (和氏), I heard long ago.
That guarding one's feet is no match for the mallow —
that saying of Bao Zhuangzi (鮑莊子) I have heard too.
Alas, from what cause in the beginning
did you come to limp as badly as this?
In my house there is no use for a golden cauldron,
and the charcoal of the brazier will not let you go.
Propped up, you are still fit for roasting and boiling,
yet now and then you spill the salt and the bean paste.
It is the smith who truly cheated me:
how should this be any shame of yours?