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 · 3 passages · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 3 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.
長望天涯眼亦昏。錯看烟霧是濃雲。迴頭微有窓蟲響。又作蕭蕭細雨聞。
Long gazing at the sky's edge, my eyes too have grown dim,
and I mistake the mist and call it thick cloud.
I turn my head: at the window an insect's sound is faint,
and I hear it, too, as the sound of fine rain scattering forlornly.
朝昏凝睇望膏恩。天更深靑無片雲。小圃蔬乾猶自憫。甫田禾稿忍堪聞。
Morning and evening I gather my eyes, hoping for the grace of a sweet rain,
but the sky grows a deeper blue, without even a scrap of cloud.
That the vegetables in the small plot have withered is pitiful enough —
how can I bear to hear that the rice in the broad fields has dried and died?
龍宅江河亦國恩。如何潛伏不興雲。茫茫下土微臣在。號及皇天庶一聞。
That the dragon dwells in rivers and great waters is also the state's grace,
so why does it lie hidden and prone, raising no clouds?
Far below on the earth there is a lowly subject
who cries out all the way to heaven: may it be heard but once.