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 · 109 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 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.
When the flowers open there is much mad wind,
and people say it envies the flowers.
Heaven's handiwork has laid out red and purple
as though it had cut them out of silk and gauze.
Having spent its own labor on them,
its cherishing heart must surely be great.
How should it instead envy their beauty
and make the mad wind the stronger?
If the wind had forged heaven's command,
how would heaven not punish it?
This reasoning cannot be so,
and I say the people's word is wrong.
To blow and shake is the wind's office;
it reaches all things with no private leaning.
If, cherishing the flowers, it stopped its blowing,
what then of the growing of all things?
When the flowers open they are worth beholding,
but when the flowers fall, what is there to sigh over?
Opening and falling are all of nature;
where there is fruit it must take the flower's place.
Do not ask after the secrets of heaven's workings;
take up the cup and sing aloud instead.