Vice Minister Yi Baekjeon came and said he had seen in a dream that I was appointed chancellor, and congratulated me, so I put him off with a poem李侍郞百全。以夢中見子拜相。來說且賀。以詩拒之。
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 · 90 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 18 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 chancellor's seat is higher than heaven
And hard to reach in a lifetime
If you would have me reach it
Give me first the nine-times-fired elixir
Short of that, with these common bones
How could I set wings in them
I know it clearly myself
And it was never what my heart hoped for
Those whom the world calls worthy
Are not all of them ministers of state
One only discusses what a man's talent is
It is not tied to rank in the court
If in the end I never become chancellor
I ask you, how will you look on me then
You will not look on me as a dog or a horse
But you will likely look on me as a straw
How much more when it is a thing seen in a dream
This congratulation is nothing but a trick