Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 32
Writings composed at Gyeyang — Report in reply to the subordinate prefecture's congratulations on the winter solstice桂陽所著狀 答屬郡賀冬至狀都行
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.
柝氷開荔。方迓嘉辰。摛藻爲春。遽貽榮問。心之所感。口不能宣。
The ice splits and the iris sprouts, and we now meet a lovely season. Unfolding fine writing, you made of it a spring and granted me of a sudden your honoring inquiries. What my heart feels, my mouth cannot set out in full.