Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 1
Written at the Session for Examining the Papers of the Gamsi (監試) of the Eulyu Year乙酉年監試考閱次有作
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 1 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.
白晝關門作鎖闈。麻衣猶向壁間窺。偶逢佳句沈吟久。自惜微疵落下遲。欲把直弦分枉正。可堪昏鏡混姸媸。諸君亦各量才分。牓出休喧謗主司。
Even in broad daylight the doors are shut and the examination hall locked, yet those in hempen clothes still peer in through the cracks in the wall. Now and then, meeting a fine line, I chant it long, and grudging a small flaw, I am slow to fail a paper. I would hold a straight bowstring and part the crooked from the upright, but how can I bear a clouded mirror that confuses the fair with the ugly? You too, each of you, measure your own talent, and when the list (牓) is posted, do not clamor and slander the examiners.
Interlinear notes 1
一作有司。
In one edition 「主司」 appears as 「有司」.