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 · 90 Chinese characters · reading time 1 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.
I keep a cat not merely to have you killed,
but hoping that at the sight of it you would hide yourselves deep away.
Why then do you not flee and hide,
but bore through walls and pierce the fence, well used to coming and going?
To come out and roam about is brazen enough already —
how much more to run wild and throw all into disorder.
You squabble and clamor and disturb my sleep,
and your thieving is so deft that you carry off another's food.
That you dare so much while the cat is there
is in truth because the cat is slow at its craft.
The cat may have failed to fulfill its office,
but your own crimes too have filled the string to the full.
The cat can be driven off with a whip,
but you are hard even to catch and bind.
Rats, O rats, if you will not repent,
I shall seek a fiercer cat yet and chastise your insolence.