On the Ninth Day of the First Month of the Sinmyo Year, Setting Down a Dream辛卯正月九日記夢
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 · 141 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 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.
A man who stands straight, others are sure to call wrong,
and if he is firm and upright the world all casts him out.
In every matter they prize a muddling along,
and do not wish for what is too bright and white.
I had long ago graven these words,
but my nature was angular and I could not master myself.
Sure enough I trod on a perilous spring
and have taken this exile of ten thousand li.
Long ago, mourning Qu Yuan and Jia Yi,
I also reproached them for their excess of uprightness;
and tonight in a dream the two men
came and took issue with the reproach I had made.
「How should it be only we?
In angularity and uprightness you are worse.
We bore what we had
and set out righteousness to plan the governing of the state,
but the kings of that time could not use us,
and so we became banished wayfarers.
But you — with what words did you stand against them,
to have fallen into so great a distress?
What you reproached in us
you have gotten for yourself instead.
Bearing hunger, you sit in a remote countryside
and keep company with fish and turtles and oysters.
Reproach us no more,
but mend your wheel and think where you are going.」
Ashamed, I could not answer at once,
and biting my finger I sighed deeply, for nothing.