Rescript Not Allowing the Second Request of Mun Wi (文緯), Director of the Astronomical Bureau, to Withdraw from Office判司天臺事文緯二度乞退不允批答
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 · 158 Chinese characters · reading time 1.5 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.
The sovereigns of old all set up officials charged with the days, to look into the yin and the yang and the seasons and the days and so reckon the business of the time. Yet to have the body among men and with the mind to know what is above the heavens is the hardest of hard things. Therefore how many men are there in any age so clear as one who lifts a mirror and lights up a face? When such a man reports his age and seeks to withdraw, it is not a thing to be allowed on the ground of his years. And how should it be the official charged with the days alone? It is so with all whose talent is of profit to their time.
You, my lord, early learned your family's calling through and through and passed all round the ranks of the court. That you are from the first exact in reckoning the courses of the stars is as the son of a good bow-maker carries on in his generation what was handed down to him; and that you have reached besides, at your side, to letters and to other arts is as a great rich man keeps what belongs to others along with his own. You may be said to be complete as a man of talent, and are truly not of the company of those who merely divine the days.
Now you beg to go home; how should my heart not be moved? Already before this I did not allow your request; why then do you report it a second time?