Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 32
Letter Sent with Wine and Fruit on the Day after the Envoy Bearing the News of Mourning Entered the Guest House布哀使到館翌日送酒菓書
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.
詔檢未宣。徒佇王君之瓊樹。酒齊甚薄。曷頽叔夜之玉山。雖甚輕微。庶或容受。
The seal of the rescript You have not yet unfolded, and so I do but stand and gaze idly upon a form like a tree of jade. The wine is very thin — how should it topple the jade mountain of Shuye? Though it is exceedingly light and slight, I pray You will receive it.
Interlinear notes 1
Shuye (叔夜) is the byname of Ji Kang (嵇康).