Declaration before the Portrait of Taejo at Bongeun Temple (奉恩寺)奉恩寺。告太祖眞前文。
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 · 88 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Former Collection, Book 38 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 holy Taejo rose up like a dragon and first gathered to himself the command let down from heaven. Now a foul district, clotted together like mayflies, has harbored in vain the mind to shake the tree.
Prostrate I consider that we your servants are of ourselves wanting in the counsels of war, and yet have wrongly been given charge of the army's discipline. They are but little things, and not for that the more easily to be overcome. We dare to pray to your shining spirit: bend down and grant us your wordless aid.
Let the army's bearing grow fuller still and the soldiers' spirit soar higher, so that when the drums sound and we dare to press forward we may run straight on behind our banner-tips with the wind, and that where the soldiers point, the souls of the defiant may fall first upon our blades. And so forth.