Chanting the Three Things on My Desk — A Bamboo Inkstone Case案中三詠 竹硯匣
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 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.
A lone bamboo had taken its fill of snow and frost
when a man of the south lightly cut and sawed it.
I asked where your heart would attach itself,
and you said that of all the many things none would do.
To be taken by someone and made a flute to be blown —
you were ashamed to follow lips and tongue;
to be taken by a child and made a horse to be ridden —
you said that going out between the legs was too base to bear.
You wished rather to come among the desks
and keep close company with a poet day by day;
and this intent is worth praising,
so it is fitting to set you out at the reading seat.
You keep the dust from my inkstone
and keep the pool of my inkstone clean,
and for writing out texts and making poems
you let me not stop though my arm should fall off.
If through you I should gain office,
I will take your firm and upright constancy for my model.