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 · 124 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
Those barbarians, fierce and obdurate,
broke in upon the border at will,
swallowed and tore at the people of this land,
and the blood ran on their teeth.
The Holy Sovereign was greatly wroth
and swept that horde away.
Those who do not understand all say,
「This was the help of the Tatar (韃靼),
and the fruit, besides, of our army's good use of the art of war.」
But I say it is not so.
It is not for you to debate.
That the Holy Sovereign received the mandate
was in truth Heaven's own giving.
Heaven, for the sake of our Holy Sovereign,
did no more than borrow the hand of the Tatar.
Though the Tatar be like wolves,
how can Heaven be escaped?
Our lord is benevolent in the highest degree
and looks upon men as upon his own children;
how then should men bear not to carry out the command of him who is lord and father,
and leave this to the brigands instead?
This, then, is what the heart of Heaven helped,
and what the merit of the sage brought about.
What, after all, have the Tatar and our own army
to do with the matter?