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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 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.
1First Poem
匝地渾天同浩浩。埤高塡塹混茫茫。飄颻點袂逡巡滅。六出功夫未細詳。
Girdling the earth and covering the sky, it is all one vastness;
heaping up the high places and filling the pits, it is all a blur.
Fluttering down, it dots my sleeve and at once melts away,
so I cannot examine closely the craft that makes its six points.
2Second Poem
入水無蹤着地堆。過簷飛去遇風迴。却因喜舞全欺蝶。若更儲名莫辨梅。
Entering water it leaves no trace; settling on the ground it piles up;
flying out past the eaves it meets the wind and comes back.
In its love of dancing it quite deceives the butterflies,
and were it to store up a name besides, none could tell it from plum blossom.
3Third Poem
簇成銀嶺擁窓前。推作瓊輪委路邊。若是白塩兼粉麪。自家庭砌尙難專。
Gathered, it makes a silver ridge and girdles the front of the window;
pushed up, it becomes a jade carriage cast aside by the road.
If it were white salt, or wheat flour,
even what lies on one's own courtyard steps would be hard to keep for oneself alone.