Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 32
Letter in Reply to the Magistrates of Several Districts, Written While Inspecting the Prisons of the Subordinate Counties in the Sixth Month六月。巡屬部監獄。答諸官遠狀。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 32 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.
火鑣烘暑。巡觀非所之纍。氷繭摛辭。遠辱過涯之問。筆無舌巧。書以膚陳。
In a steaming heat like a ball of fire I look in upon men bound in a place where they ought not to be. You spread out Your writing upon fine paper and sent me from afar an inquiry beyond my desert. My brush is not so deft as a tongue, and so I set forth my shallow reply in writing.