Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 37

Sacrificial address offered to Lord Yi Yugyeong, Chief Minister of the Palace Treasury祭大府卿李公惟卿文

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 · 154 Chinese characters · reading time 1.7 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 37 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.

月日云云。猗我明靈。豁達大度。天付斯量。若日遠步。胡不畀壽。而奪之暴。大抵官尊則愛其身。祿腆則貪其生。要欲嗇養。圖究遐齡。是理之常。亦人之情。公則不然。不以性命爲重。不以官爵爲榮。視身如寄。與物無營。以手指口。此可飮酒。日飮無何。寧顧脅腐。人飮其酒。徒嗜其味。公寓於酒。故自昏耳。以不自愛。隕生大早。嗟嗟已矣。尙忍道耶。祭無珍羞。惟酒之馨。心之所嗜。不間幽明。公其釂之。答我哀情。

Such-and-such a month, such-and-such a day, and so forth.

How fair you were, our bright spirit: yours was an open and great measure. Heaven gave you a vessel of this size, and we thought that you would walk far like the sun; why then did it not give you length of years, but take you away so suddenly?

Now when a man's office is high he spares his own body, and when his emolument is thick he covets his own life. He nurses and spares himself and schemes to live out a long span; this is the common way of reason and the feeling of men. The Lord was not so. He did not count his life weighty, nor his office a glory. He looked upon his body as a lodging, and schemed for nothing in contention with things.

He would point at his mouth with his hand and say, "With this a man can drink wine," and he drank day after day and passed his time without affairs; how should he have cared that his flanks were rotting? Others drink that wine and merely enjoy the taste of it, but the Lord lodged his body in wine and only made himself dim on purpose. Because he did not spare himself he lost his life far too early. Alas, it is over. Can one bear to speak of it?

At the sacrifice there are no rare dishes, only fragrant wine. What he delighted in in his heart will not differ between the world below and this one; may the Lord drink all of this and answer my sorrowing heart.

Interlinear notes 1

代子壻行今冢宰崔公也

Written on behalf of his son-in-law, the present chief minister, Lord Choe.

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