Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 8

On a Day of the Twelfth Month in the Gyeongja Year, Rising to Heaven in a Dream庚子十二月日夢升天

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 · 60 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 8 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.

夢上迢迢天。玉宸九鏁重。俯視下界內。蠢蠢黑頭蟲。有人忽掣肘。茫若墮長空。天去地幾何。仙凡一瞥中。夢覺若等觀。眞箇到珠宮。平分者晝夜。夢覺曷不同。

In a dream I rose to the far-off heaven, and the nine-fold locks of the Okshin Hall (玉宸殿) lay layer on layer. Looking down on the world below, they were squirming black-headed worms. Someone suddenly snatched at my elbow, and it was as though I fell into a far, vast void. How far is heaven from the earth? Immortal and ordinary man are a single blink apart. If dreaming and waking are seen as the same, then I truly reached the palace of jewels. Day and night are evenly divided, so how should dreaming and waking differ?