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 · 87 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 17 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.
If Heaven would have me drink no wine,
then it should not make the flowers and the willows bloom.
When flowers and willows are at their height, how should one not drink?
Sooner let spring forsake me than that I forsake spring.
I take up the cup and enjoy the spring, and the spring is the better for it;
I rise and dance in the spring wind, and drunken wave my hands.
The flowers too laugh for me with fair faces,
and the willows too smooth out for me their knitted brows.
I look at the flowers and delight in the willows and sing aloud:
this floating life of a hundred years is not my own.
Have you not seen? If a thousand pieces of gold are not scattered, what are they for?
The foolish man only keeps them for someone else.