Offered to Choe Hongyun of the Ministry of Personnel投崔吏部洪胤
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 · 84 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 7 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 gentleman of the first class (甲科) who found his road in the blue clouds,
whose house and line covered his name with a golden bowl.
A thousand fathoms of jewelled sea brim beneath his breast,
and five colours of brocade sunset fly from his brush-tip.
Among the ranks he once shook out a frost-like dignity,
and now with the eye of the Department (省) he hangs bright as a mirror.
For the spent and parched, who will trouble to call for a peck of water?
Those bathed in fragrance vie in shaking the dust from their hat-strings.
Your face, warm as jade, I presumed long ago to know,
and a bond thin as reed-down is of itself a glory.
That the post of recorder should seem to flutter and fly is truly beyond my station;
to butcher a chicken in one district suits my feeling.