Memorial of thanks from His Excellency (令公) for the flowers and wine bestowed when the sovereign came forth to the hall令公謝御殿宣花酒表
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 · 97 Chinese characters · reading time 1.1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 30 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.
And so forth. Favor has come down from the high heaven, and light shines upon the wine jar and the carving board. In flurried haste I receive the command, and bearing it upon my head I know the glory of it.
Prostrate, I consider that your servant's measure of knowledge is mean and empty, and what he holds in his breast shallow and narrow. Leaning upon heaven and nesting in the light, in vain was I visited with the grace that strokes and rears me; and as one afloat on the sea who has lost its edge, looking back, I want for knowledge that runs through all things.
How could I have thought that Your Majesty the Holy Sovereign, who in ritual puts the ordering of what is within first and in governance exalts the setting of the household in order, having divided the land and given the thatch grass and so already exalted the law of the feudal lords, would bestow flowers and wine besides and help once more the joy of the guests' seats? Knowing of myself how hard it is to repay and match it, I can only hold to the utmost a heart that engraves and keeps this in my breast.