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

Chanting Snow — The Sense of the Words "Willow Catkins"詠雪 柳絮語意

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 · 28 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 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.

不是玄冬寒裂面。終疑柳絮起漫漫。若言老矚迷難辨。道蘊應將鏡眼看。

Were it not the season when deep winter's cold cuts the face, I would in the end suspect that willow catkins were rising without end. If one says old eyes are dim and can hardly tell them apart, then Xie Daoyun (謝道韞) surely looked with eyes like mirrors.

Interlinear notes 2

韻上同

The rhyme is the same as above.

謝道韞 — The base text has 道蘊. This is Xie Daoyun of the Jin, who, likening snow to willow catkins, said, "Better still, willow catkins rising on the wind" (未若柳絮因風起). — Translator