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 · 120 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 10 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.
Someone asked: as for rivers and pools in general
The water wells up out of the ground
How is it then that this inkstone pool
Must be wetted with drops before it first brims over
To call this thing a pool
Seems not quite to fit the sense of the word
I answer: as for what you say
What can be done about its going against reason
This pool is no ordinary pool
And the common eye cannot make it out
Narrow and small a hollow though it be called
Grind in it, and writing comes out unhindered
What comes of a single grinding
Is flowers and willows, wind and moon
And grind a thousand times, grind a hundred times
And it works out close and fine the king's great designs
How many poets has it molded and cast
How many myriad brushes has it bathed
At its largest it wraps up heaven and earth
At its deepest it could swallow the great ocean
O inkstone pool, O inkstone pool
In all the ages it has never of itself run dry
Welling up from the ground and being wetted by drops
Come in the end to mingle and return to one