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.
The monsoon rain pours down like a river
and people are about to turn into fish.
One might hoist a sail on the nine avenues,
so a boat and oars had better be got ready.
Beyond the gate it is wide and far
and a neighbor is a thousand li away.
The south wall has already fallen over
and the northwest is nearly down as well.
The leaking house is hard to stop by any of a hundred means,
so I hold an umbrella and cannot sleep at night.
My wife and children, alas, do not understand,
and their reproaching voices do not stop.
I say to them: this is Heaven's own doing —
how dare you carry on so?
I only fear that in the season of frost
the rain should be like this.
The will of Heaven is truly hard to know,
and so I bow and pray only that it clear for a while.