Bathing in the Pond at Home on the Second Day of the Seventh Month七月初二日。浴家池。
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 6 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 am feeble now and afraid of cold water,
so even in the sixth month I did not go into the pond to bathe.
Today the steaming heat is worse than at the height of summer,
and at last I went in and parted the clear green.
It was like sitting on cold ice; I could not bear it long,
my hair stood on end and gooseflesh rose over my whole body.
The heat and the cold of a single body are of themselves fleeting;
how swift the overturning, in the space of a moment!
Washing off the grime and washing the body are both empty things;
who is it that touches, and what is it that is touched?
Only one who has penetrated through will know this meaning;
I too would speak of it, but my way is not yet ripe.