Presented to the Gentlemen of the Inner Chancellery — Yi Sunjung (李淳中), Left Remonstrator呈內省諸郞 左司諫李淳中
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.
Truly you stand up beyond other men, and the gall of the remonstrating official is deep in you,
and your house has the history of offering six admonitions (箴) to the Tang court.
Your hand like lightning has spread your name and startled the gall of ghosts,
and trimming your lines with an axe within the clouds, they come forth from the mind of heaven.
For two years at the Blue Chain Gate (靑瑣門) you drew the brush in attendance,
and in days past at the Aloeswood Pavilion you washed your face and chanted.
We are both of us a thousand years after Boyang (伯陽),
and I would take hold of the immortal plum tree and hope to be covered by what shade is left.