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 · 86 Chinese characters · reading time 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. On half a breadth of shining salary warrant the lives of the many hang. At its few lines, tears of gratitude fall alike from different eyes.
Prostrate we consider that your servants are of a usefulness that does not suit the times, yet our offices take part in the places where the Way is discussed. Always we bear the rebuke of having left our posts empty, and we are ashamed to have no talent for enriching the state. Looking at ourselves, what we eat overflows, and we fear the vessel is on the point of brimming over. Receiving presumptuously again a bestowal that steeps the worthy, we hold all the more the shame of stealing our salary.
Though it is hard for your servants to balance the flavours in making the soup of the sovereign of Yin, shall we not dare to go to the whetstone of the High Emperor and anxiously bend our minds to the labour? And so forth.
Interlinear notes 2
中謝。
Here the words of thanks (中謝) are inserted.
半幅華陴 — the base text has 陴, but it is taken as an error for 牌, and so rendered "salary warrant." — Translator