Presented to the Gentlemen of the Inner Chancellery — Choe Gwangu (崔光遇), Right Rectifier of Omissions呈內省諸郞。 上右正言崔光遇
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.
Lonely and spare, your bearing stands out;
dignified, you are the essence of a sea crane.
Getting your time, you unfolded the skill you had longed to show,
and startling the world, you spread abroad your name in poetry.
At the Han mansion you held the dragon and raised it up,
and in the high heavens you go bearing the sun.
Scarcely had you risen to the Crow Office (府) and stood stately,
when at once you entered the phoenix pond and are clear.
Your setting out of five-character poems is uncommonly deft,
and the learning of the three abundances you accomplished early.
In person you have become an old retainer of the Son of Heaven,
and your office is the glory of the forest of scholars.
When a foot of writing comes down,
the strength of a thousand geun in the brush is firm.
To grasp the scales you had long set in your ordinary mind;
how should the gladness of the pine-nut tree be without feeling?
Thread-thin, I would gladly keep on meeting you, but am blocked;
how am I to bear this heart that leans so earnestly?
There is nothing in me to peddle troublesomely of myself;
the light and the heavy lie with the balance that is hung.
Interlinear notes 1
上在藩邸。公爲典籤。上卽位。隨龍入內。故云。
When the King was still in his private residence the Duke became Keeper of Tallies (典籤), and when the King took the throne he followed the dragon into the palace; and so it is said thus.