Gazing at the Sea and Rejoicing Belatedly over the Moving of the Capital望海因追慶遷都
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 0.9 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.
1The First
遷都自古上天難。一旦移來似轉丸。不是淸河謀大早。三韓曾已化胡蠻。
Moving a capital has from of old been harder than climbing to heaven,
yet the move was made in a single morning, as easily as rolling an egg.
Had the counsel of Cheongha (淸河) not come so very early,
the Three Han would already have turned into barbarian land.
2The Second
百雉金城一帶河。較量功力孰爲多。萬千胡騎如飛鳥。咫尺蒼波略未過。
Between a hundredfold battlemented wall of iron and a single stretch of river,
which of them, measured for strength, counts the more?
Though barbarian horsemen by the myriad are like birds in flight,
they have not crossed the blue waves a step away, not in the least.
3The Third
表裏江山坐萬家。舊京形勝復何加。已知河勝金城固。且更諳他德勝河。
Within and without are river and hills, and ten thousand households have settled here;
what could even the old capital's superb terrain add to this?
We already know that a river is better than the hardness of an iron wall;
we must know too that virtue is better than a river.