These poems by the happiest man in the world are full of light though written in dark times. Ch'on had the art of seeing the beauty of life beyond all the pain, and of putting it into the music of words. Recently, many young Koreans have discovered in these poems and in the poet's life the innocence and honesty they look for in vain in modern society. His poverty and his body broken by torture never made Ch'on bitter or angry; his poems are hymns of joy at the marvels of nature and the simple pleasures of life. His greatest poem sees death, not as the end but as a journey back to heaven where...

Kyu-bo Yi (1168-1241), the greatest of the classical Korean poets, was born into a very turbulent period of history, when the Koryo kingdom was threatened from the north by barbarians and from within by the ongoing struggle for supremacy among the various factions. His poems, confessional and transcendent, describe moments of personal illumination in the course of everyday life.