Rescript Not Allowing Song Chwi (宋就), Bureau Director in the Ministry of Rites, to Decline the Command to Return to Office while in Mourning禮部郞中宋就讓起復不允批答
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 · 125 Chinese characters · reading time 1.2 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 33 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.
To lean upon the Classic of Rites and wish to see out the three years' mourning is the righteousness of a son who is careful to the end; and to be driven by the business of the state and to follow, as the time requires, the institution of the auspicious dress is also the propriety of a court official who follows the change. In the main it has been practised from of old and did not begin now.
Of late you met with mourning and were deeply pained with grief. With a single heart you swore still to spend yourself to the very end of heaven; yet the hundred days have come round as a crack of light goes by, and you ought to follow the settled custom and return to your former office. Why send up of a sudden words of stubborn refusal and seek to avoid the intent of the command already given?
You have not failed in filial piety toward the kindness of your loving mother, and may be said to have no want in you; and you have already become my subject, so that in loyalty too it would seem hard to cast off the one side only. Do not make firm a single obstinacy, but make both of them whole.