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

On the Eighteenth Day of the Sixth Month of the Jeongyu Year a Great Rain Fell and Washed Away People and Beasts and Houses; Sighing to Myself That My Service as Chief Minister Was a Poor Thing, I Showed This to My Colleague, Chief Minister Yi丁酉六月十八日大雨。漂人物家戶。自嘆爲相無狀。示同寮李相。

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 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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

謬參丞相自猶嘲。手拙難於鼎味調。燮理五年何所得。霪霖一夕百家漂。

Wrongly numbered among the chancellors, I rather mock myself: my hand is clumsy, and it is hard to balance the flavor in the cauldron. Five years of regulating and governing — what have I gained, that in one night of the monsoon rain a hundred houses were washed away?

2The Second

不是朝廷也乏材。吾儕僥倖忝鈞台。未知殷相爲霖用。反致人家墊沒災。

It is not that the court lacks men of talent, yet we by mere luck have defiled the Chief Minister's seat. Not knowing how the chief minister of Yin became the use of the monsoon rain, we have instead called down the calamity of other men's houses being sunk in water.