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Rejoicing in the sweet rain喜雨

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 · 40 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 18 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.

人皆新有田。得雨抃不止。我無一畝地。爲國誠自喜。國廩如有餘。吾食何時匱。願天賜澤周。先自公田始。

People have all newly taken fields And having got rain they do not stop clapping their hands I have not so much as one furrow of land Yet for the country's sake I am truly glad of myself If there is a surplus in the state granaries When would my own food ever run short I pray that Heaven send its bounty everywhere But let it begin first with the public fields (公田)

Interlinear notes 1

入新京。爭求田以耕。予獨未。

On coming into the new capital everyone vied to get fields and plow them, but I alone could not.