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 · 110 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 4 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.
Grown old, I take pleasure in sour things instead,
and this too is where sickness has come in.
When I first ate plums before this,
I never thought I would eat them again.
Now I am already used to tasting them,
and if I throw them away it is no great waste.
Who would send any to an idle household?
With my stipend I trade for them in the market.
By this I come to know the ways of the market:
chasing profit, men forget life and death.
They would even pluck the stars down from the sky;
how much more a thing within human reach.
Though the old capital lies across the river,
they do not stop until they have carried it all over.
From of old, among all the fruits,
those whose names stand side by side are the peach and the plum.
As for Dongfang Shuo (東方朔) and the peaches,
what he stole was but three.
I now eat plums in plenty,
so even Dongfang Shuo would be hard put to match me.
Whatever suits one's mind is a thing of the immortals,
so why argue over immortal and common man?
Interlinear notes 3
六月二十七日
This is the twenty-seventh day of the sixth month.
邇來憚喫飯。唯好酸物。
These days I shrink from eating rice and like only sour things.