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

Sitting Cold by a Leaking Window漏窓寒坐

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 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.

四面難防刮面風。爐灰屢撥覓微紅。更看飛雪如飄絮。天意應敎凍此翁。

Hard it is to keep out the wind that cuts the face from every side, so again and again I rake the brazier's ashes for a faint live coal. Looking again, the flying snow is like scattering cotton: can it be Heaven's will to freeze this old man?

夏熱秋凉道若公。天寒亦合屬於冬。平分時令何須嘆。窓漏餬遲坐我慵。

Summer is hot and autumn cool — Heaven's way seems even-handed, and that the days are cold belongs rightly to winter. Why sigh at the seasons being evenly divided? The window leaks and I have put off papering it — that is my own idleness.