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 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 16 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
今古形容語已陳。欲裁新意倒前人。豈知爾反令心苦。不入詩來入鬢新。
The words that have likened you, in old times and now, are already worn out,
so I meant to cut out a new conceit and topple those before me.
How could I have known that you would instead torment my heart,
and come not into my poem but newly into the hair at my temples?
2Second Poem
入鬢新痕都是雪。不勞譬況此相同。唯餘一段未同處。鬢上難融汝易融。
The new marks that have come into my temples are all snow,
so without need of comparison, this much is the same.
Only one point of unlikeness remains:
that at my temples is hard to melt, while you melt easily.
3Third Poem
融成流水凍成氷。變化無窮獨爾能。作雪爭吾雙鬢白。爲氷學我一心澄。
Melting, you become flowing water; freezing, you become ice:
in changing without end, you alone are able.
As snow you vie with the whiteness of my two temples,
and as ice you learn the clearness of my single heart.