Preface to the Later Collection of the Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country — Yi Ham序
嗣子涵謹言，大人平生所著多矣，然本不收蓄，又爲人取去不還，或焚棄之，《前集》有〈焚蒿詩〉，僅存十之二三，故難於編綴。凡大人所嘗遊踐儒家釋院及交游士大夫間，無不搜覓，得詩文凡若干首，分爲四十一卷，編成《前集》，侍郞李需序之。集成之後，又得遺逸及近所著古律詩八百四十七首、雜文五十首，成後集十二卷。噫，脫不幸不傳于世，亦足爲一門子姓傳家之寶矣！大人初登第時，嘗與四五同年，將遊通濟院，聯鞍唱和，公詩一句云：「蹇驢影裏碧山晚，斷鴈聲中紅樹秋。」四韻失三句。聞此詩流入于宋，大爲其宰相所賞。此少年時所賦特一首耳，其賞如此，况得見全集乎？又代琴學士讓官表云：「昔也帶雙學士，有譏越分者幾人，今則兼三大夫，將復置賢於何地？」此亦人所愛誦，而皆不得全篇以附于此，是一恨也。由此觀之，其遺珠漏玉之不見者，非止此而已矣。時辛丑十二月日，知洪州事副使兼勸農使管句學事將仕郞尙食奉御涵，謹序。
His successor son Ham (涵) respectfully states. The writings my father composed in his lifetime were many, but from the first he did not gather and store them, and besides, others took them away and did not return them, and some were even burnt — in the Earlier Collection there is a poem called "Burning My Drafts" (焚蒿詩) — so that barely two or three out of ten remained; and for that reason the compiling was hard.
There was no place left unsearched among the houses of the scholars and the temples my father used to frequent, and among the gentlemen with whom he kept company, and so some poems and prose pieces were got and divided into forty-one volumes to make the Earlier Collection, for which Vice Director Yi Su (李需) wrote the preface. After that collection was done, we obtained further what had been left out, together with eight hundred and forty-seven poems in the old and the regulated styles composed in recent times and fifty miscellaneous pieces, and made of them the twelve volumes of the Later Collection.
Ah, even if by misfortune they should not be handed down in the world, they will be ample to become a treasure handed down for generations by the descendants of one house.
When my father first passed the examination, he went out with four or five who had passed in the same year to amuse themselves at Tongjewon (通濟院), their saddles side by side, exchanging poems; and one couplet of the Duke's ran: "In the shadow of the limping donkey the green mountains darken; amid the cry of the lone wild goose autumn enters the red trees." Of the four rhymes, three lines have been lost. I have heard that this poem found its way into Song (宋) and was greatly praised by their chief minister. This was but a single poem composed in his youth, and yet the praise for it was such as this — how much more had they seen the whole collection!
Again, in the memorial declining office that he composed on behalf of Academician Geum (琴學士), it runs: "In former days, when he held two academician's posts at once, how many there were who reproached him for overstepping his station; and now that he is to hold three grandee's offices together, in what place do you mean to put a worthy man?" This too men gladly recite, but I could not obtain the whole of either piece to attach here, and this is one regret.
Reckoning from these, the dropped pearls and the leaked jade that are nowhere to be seen will not be these alone.
The time is a certain day in the twelfth month of the year Sinchuk. Ham — Administrator of Hongjusa, Deputy Prefect and concurrently Agriculture Commissioner, Academician in Charge of Schools, Gentleman of Long Service, Steward of the Royal Table — respectfully writes this preface.
Interlinear notes 1
1241年
1241.