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 · 80 Chinese characters · reading time 0.8 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.
An old man, short of stature, with a beard like frost,
wearing a single headcloth aslant.
He sits blankly, eyes open and saying nothing,
so that people look on him as a monster.
They do not know that within this scrap of a body
heaven and earth can be held at their full size.
At times he goes searching again for a line of verse
and chants it out long and cannot stop himself,
so that people suspect it is the cry of an old fox
and block their ears and run away to escape it.
They do not know that in the midst of that chanting
the sound of metal and of stone is what comes forth.
You would now make a fox of me,
and set me among the company of monsters too.
Call me a horse or call me an ox—
I leave it to whatever you choose to point at.