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Dispatch of the Duke of Hwanan (淮安公) in Reply to the Same Marshal淮安公答同前元帥狀

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 · 124 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 28 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.

右某辭違已後。伏想鈞候起居何似。忽沐手敎。備諳雅履康和萬順。其爲欣抃。言所未周。某頃者。全荷閣下之保護。得完微喘。跋涉無恙。尋遠本國。但日夜北望。翹企而已不意仁人之不忘疇昔眷顧之意。至辱榮問如此。非吾瑣瑣所敢當也。予無所倚。倚閣下如太山。惟冀爲小子千萬自愛。享壽千秋。益加扶護耳。無任云云。

Respectfully I wonder how your esteemed person has been since So-and-so took his leave and departed. All at once I was favored with the instruction written in your own hand, and learned in full that you are at ease in your comings and goings and altogether well; my joy at it words cannot exhaust.

I, for my part, was wholly in your care on that late occasion, and so kept my thread of life whole, and walked the long road without mishap and came back at length to my own country. Only, night and day, I look northward and stand on tiptoe. I did not know that one so good would, not forgetting the mind with which you watched over me in days past, send down so splendid an inquiry as this. It is not what a trifling man like me can bear.

I have nothing to lean upon, and so I lean upon Your Excellency as upon Mount Tai. I beg only that, for the sake of this small person, you will by all means care for yourself and live long and uphold me the more. And so forth.

‹ Letter Sent to the Marshal of the Mongol State Contents Dispatch in Reply to Marshal Ageo (兒巨), as Above ›Listen to this piece