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 · 80 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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 planted a solitary paulownia at my house
and waited for the phoenix, but it did not come.
I cut it down and made of it a single geomungo,
and played the old tune 「Yangsu (漾水)」.
There is no Zhong Ziqi (鍾子期) in the world,
so who would gladly lend an ear?
My neighbor planted mulberries
and raises silkworms, and the worms fatten easily.
They spit out thread of five colors,
which woven becomes a beauty's robe.
Happily it goes up to a gentleman's hall
and can lean close until the feast is over.
Plant mulberries, and you are easily taken in;
plant paulownias, and it is hard to come to anything.
I say to the people of the world:
plant mulberries, and do not plant paulownias.