Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 14

Written on Being First Appointed Rectifier of Omissions初拜正言有作

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 0.5 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 14 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.

1First Poem

八載花甎沐帝恩。白頭方始直西垣。平生口訥如囊括。人導無言老正言。

Eight years on the flowered tiles (花甎) I received the king's grace, and white-haired I only now keep watch at the Western Wall (西垣). All my life my mouth has been slow, as if a sack were tied shut, and people call me the old Rectifier of Omissions who does not speak.

2Second Poem

拾遺班秩要而淸。大副書生宿昔情。白首靑衫人莫笑。金衣前導足爲榮。

The rank of Reminder (拾遺) is both vital and clear, and it answers well to a scholar's long-held heart. Do not laugh, you others, at white hair in a green jacket: one clad in gold leads the way before me, and the honor is ample.