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 · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 12 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.
I have heard from the men of old
that friends hold earnest urging dear,
grinding and polishing each other with virtue
as one takes the flaw out of a jade.
Ah, but you are not like this:
you grind each other and wound the flesh instead.
On the South Mountain there are the arching tree (橋木) and the catalpa (梓木),
the one looking down and the other up — the rule of father and son.
And there is also a tree of mutual yielding,
whose eastern branch, I have heard, gives way to the western.
You, by good fortune, sprang from a single root;
why then so hastily become each other's enemy?
Night and day you strike and fight again,
and looking up I see no bark left whole.
The sound of you, too, is not easy to hear,
and I hate how you raise the wind like a drum.
Though this tree bear good fruit,
I have no wish to eat of it.
I call the servant to cut it down at once
and charge him to use it up on the morning fire.
The way of friendship has long been lost,
and this is warning enough.
Interlinear notes 1
俗云磨友木也。
Among common people it is called the friend-grinding tree (磨友木).