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 · 185 Chinese characters · reading time 1.7 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 21 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.
In my house there were in all three bays of a wing that had fallen in and could hardly be held up. Unwillingly I had them all seen to and repaired. Before this, two of those bays had long been leaking in the long rains. I knew it and yet put it off and did not repair them; one bay had been wetted by the rain once, and I had its tiles changed at once.
When the work of repair was done this time, I saw that in those which had leaked long the rafters, the pillars and the beams were all rotted and could not be used, so that the cost of it was great; while in the one that had taken the rain once the timbers of the house were all whole and firm and could be used again, so that the cost of it was small.
Upon this I say: with a man's own person it is so as well. To know that a thing is wrong and yet not mend it quickly — the ruin of it is no different from timber rotted past use; and not to shrink from mending one's faults does no harm to becoming a good man again, which is no different from timbers that can be used again. Nor is it this alone: the government of a state is like this too. When among affairs there are those that gnaw at the people grievously, and they are let pass in a makeshift way and not mended, and only after the people are ruined and the state imperilled does one try to mend them in haste — will it not be hard then to prop things up and get through? How can one fail to take care?