Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Former Collection, Book 37
Declaration to the God of the Great Year (大歲)告大歲神文
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.
云云。大歲何神。今居何地。予昏不知。鵲之不似。犯于無忌。惟心所使。繄予之爲。天亦不訾。予非自高。惷直是恃。
And so forth.
What god is the Great Year (大歲), and in what quarter does he now stand? I am in the dark and do not know. Being not even the equal of the magpie, I knew nothing of what to shun and trespassed upon it. I did only as my heart bade me.
This is what I have done, and yet I think that heaven too will not reproach me. It is not that I hold myself high; I only trust in my own foolishness and uprightness.