Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 32
Letter in Reply to a Letter from a Subordinate County, on the Road to Fell Timber斫木行次。答屬部遠狀。
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.
倒壑傾山。行選千章之杞梓。濡毫泚墨。遽貽滿紙之珠璣。行道怱怱。占書草草。
Overturning the valleys and tilting the hills, I go about choosing a thousand trees of good timber. You wetted Your brush and took up ink, and of a sudden sent me a paper filled with writing like pearls. My journey presses, and this letter, set down as it was dictated, is rough.