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 · 78 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 37 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.
At sixteen you married me. You were practiced in the rules of the household and upright in your bearing as a wife. Whatever I pointed to, you met and followed at once. In serving my parents there was scarcely even a small fault, and you offered the sacrificial food with care and were not in the least idle.
In hard times we went through the ditch together, and just as the house grew a little easier your life gave you no reprieve. You left so suddenly, as though a flower had fallen all at once. Heaven did it, and there is nothing to be done.
My bowels are torn already, and my tears fall after them. The wine is poor, but I have filled one cup. Weigh my devotion, and would that you might take a mouthful of it. Alas, how sad.
Interlinear notes 1
代人行○三言
Written on behalf of another. It is a writing of three characters.