Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 3
Written Again That Same Day (是日又作)是日又作
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.
一日勞成千廩積。天如不雨虛拋力。雨能富國能貧國。一滴千金那可直。動天都在吾君德。
A single day's toil makes the heaping of a thousand granaries, and if heaven sends no rain, that labor is thrown away in vain. Rain can make a country rich and can make it poor, so even at a thousand in gold a drop, how could that meet its worth? What moves heaven lies wholly in our sovereign's virtue.