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 · 103 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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.
Though the blue heaven tilt and the great earth lean,
though the Five Great Peaks slant and the Three Mountains shift,
only the rightness of the mind neither towers nor leans.
Though stone turn to leather and iron to cotton,
though gold rot and jade crumble away,
only the steadfastness of the mind reaches through ten thousand ages and grows the firmer.
The face of the Queen Mother of the West (西王母) withers easily,
the lifespan of Peng Keng (彭鏗) wears away easily,
yet only the vigor of the mind the sun and moon cannot make old.
Do not call it a single inch —
its breadth may be a thousand li.
Stern as ice,
clear as water.
Mind, O mind, unlike any other —
who was it that gave me this?
Ah, ah, who can ever know it?