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 · 150 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 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.
To cut down on wine may yet be promised,
but to hold the tongue is not easy.
Think this floating life over well:
it is swift as four horses passing a chink in the door.
Close both eyes one morning,
and they see you off to the foot of Bukmangsan (北邙山).
Though you should wish to do something mad,
can white bones rise again?
Though you should wish to speak with others,
what can be done, since the world beyond and this world are not the same?
The wind is desolate in the white poplars,
and only a three-foot mound rises there in vain.
Not even a one-foot mound can be kept:
woodcutters and herdboys tread it down to nothing.
The skull is buried in the mugwort,
and the elk and the deer make their home there.
When this time comes, the good and the evil
are mixed together and become one road.
Though he be called a man awake for ten thousand ages,
what profit does the dead man receive?
Though he be called a mad wanderer of all antiquity,
what shame is there for the dead man?
Why then do those who deck themselves out and deceive
hold their bearing stiff and pile up deep calculations?
How should they not enjoy good wine? Yet
they dither and cannot even get drunk.
Having something to say, they dare not spit it out,
and love only to hide themselves away as one ties up a sack.
This too is one and the same dream;
why argue over what is right and what is wrong?