Letter of Congratulation Presented to Administrator of Chancellery Affairs (平章事) Gi Hongsu (奇洪壽) at the Winter Solstice冬至賀狀 奇平章洪壽
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 · 76 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 min
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.
The stars set right the station of the Pleiades, and the handle of the Dipper has turned back to the station of ja (子). Now the one yang returns in fullness, and the five blessings arrive and gather.
In reverence I consider that Your Excellency of such-and-such office is a golden mountain ten thousand fathoms high and an iron trunk a hundred arm-spans round. In one lifetime You have joined two excellences, holding, as the Linghu (令狐) house did, the authority of a general and of a minister together; and generation after generation becoming one of the Three Dukes, You have carried on the flourishing of cap and robe of the house of Yang Zhen (楊震). Now, meeting the day of the winter solstice, You enjoy a span of years longer still.
We, looking back, are bound like frogs in a well, and cannot climb the steep places of the Dragon Gate.