Presented to the Gentlemen of the Inner Chancellery — Yi Gyejang (李桂長), Left Grand Master of Remonstrance呈內省諸郞。 上左諫議李桂長
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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 8 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.
The lingering blessing of a famous house reaches far,
and a phoenix was born in the phoenix's nest.
The colored brush floats up a red mirage,
and splendid writing spews out a richly patterned dragon (蛟龍).
Good iron is plentiful in the great bellows,
and a broad blade takes the prize from the marvelous butcher.
Your high rank goes beyond the Three Solitaries (三獨),
and your plain bearing presses down the five friendships.
The dragon among men leaps across the sea,
and the tiger of poetry stirs the sky and roars.
The bright mirror covers over the fair and the hateful,
and the great sea takes in both the large and the small.
Still you suffer a reed to lean upon jade;
how should you let the hye orchid turn to thatch-grass?
If a mal of water would wet this crucian carp,
the pearls on the dish would think of the weeping merfolk (鮫人).
Do not let me be buried away like a sword;
how should I only hang like a gourd?
Since I lean already on the good fortune of one who knows me,
why trouble the hexagram of a divination for office?