Presented to the Gentlemen of the Inner Chancellery — Min Gonggyu (閔公珪), Left Grand Master of Remonstrance呈內省諸郞 左諫議大夫閔公珪
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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 5 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.
A famed house of blue and crimson robes — for how many generations its ministers?
Of brocade you have made your liver and bowels, and of water your spirit.
Who would know that in the clear and vital place of the Secretariat (中書省)
there is instead the person of a man of elegance, an Outer Supervisor (外監)?
Your fair conduct has already been set down handsomely by the silver brush,
and your sturdy writing once carried off the new brocade robe.
If the Han emperor should ask after the rhapsody of Sima Xiangru (司馬相如),
how fortunate it would be that Lord Yang (楊公) recommended a man of his own district!
Interlinear notes 2
公本官秘書監。
The Duke's original office was Director of the Palace Library (秘書監).