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

Written Above My Poems and Prose as My Son Ham (涵) Was Compiling Them兒子涵編予詩文。因題其上。

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 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.

雕刻心肝作一家。於韓於杜可堪過。假敎百世行之盛。身後浮名奈我何。

Carving my liver and heart, I have made up one house of writing — but can it ever surpass Han Yu (韓愈) and Du Fu (杜甫)? Even should it circulate widely for a hundred generations, what is a floating name after death to me?

草木同枯是我徒。區區詩卷不如無。茫然千載能知不。姓李人生東海隅。

To wither away together like grass and trees is our lot, and these trifling scrolls of verse were better not to be. In the far distance of a thousand years, could anyone know that a man surnamed Yi (李) lived in a corner of the Eastern Sea?