Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 32
Letter Refusing to Allow Your Saying a Second Time That You Would Depart二辭不允狀
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.
方諧披霧之期。尙勤仰止。何促朝天之路。遽告歸歟。不敢稟承。庶其稽緩。
Now that the time has come for parting the mist and waiting upon You, my heart that looks up and longs for You grows the more earnest. How is it that You press forward the road of Your audience with the Son of Heaven and say that You will return so suddenly? I dare not accede to it; I beg You to put it off a little.