Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 15

At Manilsa, Thanking My Fellow Officials for Holding a Service for an Old Man and Setting Out Wine to Comfort Him萬日寺。謝寮友諸君爲老夫展齋聖殿。仍置酒見慰。

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 15 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.

多謝諸公記老生。心香信粒叩禪扃。仍呼蟻泛盈壺酒。共上翬飛望海亭。極浦歸帆欹枕送。夕陽漁笛把柸聽。同寮情重那詞飮。醉後難禁感涕零。

Deep thanks to you gentlemen for remembering an old man. With incense of the heart and grains of faith you knocked at the meditation hall's door. Then you called for bottlefuls of wine with ants afloat on it, and together we climbed Manghaejeong, soaring up like a pheasant in flight. The sails going home to the far inlet we saw off leaning on our pillows; the fisherman's flute in the evening light we listened to with cups in hand. When a colleague's feeling is so weighty, how could I refuse the wine? Once drunk, it is hard to hold back the tears of gratitude from flowing.