Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 5

Yi Su, Vice Minister, Received the Red Leather Belt Bestowed by the King in Person and Came Wearing It to Visit Me, and I Congratulated Him in a Poem李侍郞需親受御賜鞓帶。遂帶出訪予。以詩賀之。

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 · 56 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min

Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 5 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.

玉色親臨賜帶鞓。簪紳改視亦相榮。天生容彩元來美。物賁光華倍露呈。腰昔黃時嫌自背。眼今紅處想頻驚。直關當代求儒急。賀不於君賀聖明。

The royal countenance came in person to bestow a red leather belt, and the officials look again with changed eyes and share the honor too. Your inborn bearing and luster were beautiful from the first, and now that a thing adorns you, your brightness shows forth twice over. When a dull yellow belt was at your waist you shrank from it as if turning away; now that your eyes meet the red, they will start at it again and again. This is a matter bound up with how urgently the age seeks men of worth, so I congratulate not you but the holy brightness of the throne.