Writings composed at Gyeyang — Report in reply to General Choe, Magistrate of Ganghwa桂陽所著狀 答江華縣令崔將軍狀
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 · 83 Chinese characters · reading time 1 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.
You have come down from the tiered heavens to preside over a land of waters. Shod in the shoes of the two ducks, you seem still to be in an immortal's office; and sending the letter of a single wild goose, you were first to grant me your precious words.
I humbly consider that Your Excellency of such-and-such office is a noble scion of a chancellor's house and one who once gave himself to the schools. Brandishing your authority with a black spear, you became of a sudden a commander leading a thousand men; setting foot upon the blue clouds, you have for a while become the magistrate of a district of a hundred li. Reversals of fortune are by their nature like a contest at baduk, so what speck could lodge in your breast?
I, so-and-so, await the day I may run like the wind to see you, and would now set a time to part the mist.