Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1

Written While Lodging on Mount Cheonma (天磨山)寓天磨山有作

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 · 76 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.

世人但取山崔嵬。迺以天磨而號之。爾雖高高千萬仞。天可磨耶義不宜。媧皇五色石。鍊之補天虧。天虧尙可補。豈肯相磨爲。天下有山豈遁象。改曰遁嵓何所疑。我今來遁是亦晚。二陰寢長今方知。

The people of the world see only that the mountain is high and steep, and so they named it Cheonma (天磨), the Grinder of Heaven. Though you stand a thousand, ten thousand fathoms high, can you grind heaven away? The meaning will not do. The five-coloured stones of Nüwa (媧皇) were fired, and the breached heaven was patched; if even a breached heaven can be patched and filled, why should it gladly let itself be ground against? There is a mountain under heaven — how is that not the figure of hiding? What doubt is there in calling it instead Dunam (遁嵓), the Rock of Retreat? I have come now to hide, and this too is late; only now do I know that the two yin (陰) are slowly growing.

Interlinear notes 1

予辛亥年。久寄此山。至自稱白雲居士。時有此作。

In the year Sinhae I lodged long on this mountain and went so far as to call myself the Layman of White Cloud (白雲居士). This piece belongs to that time.