Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 13

Using the Former Rhymes Again, Presented to the Marquis of Jingang復用前韻。上晉康侯。

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 · 2 passages · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 13 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.

1The First

黃屋前頭揔是天。紫雲猶繞小亭筵。一篇宸翰眞琳簡。讀向人間骨欲仙。

Before the yellow canopy (黃屋) all of it is heaven, and purple clouds wind about the seats of the little pavilion. A single piece in the king's own hand is truly a letter of jade, and reading it here in the human world my bones would turn immortal.

Interlinear notes 1

禁內諸儒同作。

The gentlemen of the palace composed it together.

2The Second

汾陽再造聖唐天。甲第猶無御幸筵。千古三韓今始見。一門能致九門仚。

The Prince of Fenyang (汾陽王) made over again the holy heaven of Tang, yet in that fine house of his there was no seat where a sovereign had come. In a thousand ages Samhan sees it only now: a single house has been able to bring here the immortal of the ninefold courts (九重).