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Poems for the Figured Screen (文機障子) and the Lantern at the Lantern Evening of the First Full Moon — Composed and Presented by the Academy of Letters · The Lantern Poem上元燈夕。文機障子,燈籠詩。翰林奏呈。 燈籠詩

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 · 28 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 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.

煌煌列燄花齊綻。薄薄輕紗水正澄。炤却萬人同一影。始知眞箇大王燈。

The flames ranged out in brightness are as if flowers had burst open all at once, and the thin, thin light silk is as if water were just then clear. Shining on ten thousand people, it makes them all one single shadow, and only now do I know that this is truly the Great King's lantern.