Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 19
Inscription to Caution Myself自誡銘
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 19 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.
無曰親眤而漏吾微。寵妻嬖妾兮。同衾異意。無謂僕御兮輕其言。外若無骨兮。苞蓄有地。況吾不媟近不驅使者乎。
Do not, because they are dear and close, let what is secret in me leak out. Even a beloved wife and a cherished concubine share the same quilt but not the same mind. Do not, because they are servants or grooms, take their words lightly. Outwardly they seem to have no bones, yet they have a place where they wrap things up and store them away. How much more so with one whom I neither treat with familiarity nor have in my service.