Offering Thanks to Chief Minister and Chancellor Lord Choe for Sending Me a Walking Staff奉謝冢宰侍中崔公惠柱杖
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 · 2 passages · 133 Chinese characters · reading time 1.4 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 6 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.
So-and-so reports. In recent years my body has weakened and my legs have grown feeble, so that I must have a staff before I can rise. Earlier, in your gracious kindness, you sent me a precious staff, and I thought to myself that this would be enough to sustain me all my life.
Now you grant me another, to hold up this worn and weary body still more and to guard once again my tottering steps. While this staff remains, how could this heart of mine ever be done? Though I come to white bones, how should I dare forget? I have respectfully made one poor poem, to offer thanks for a ten-thousandth part of it.
In ten steps I totter and fall nine times,
and I thank you, my lord, for making my whole body strong.
Its sparse round joints are hard, as though strung beads had been parted;
its smooth even bark seems to vie with snow and frost.
Only when I lean on it and rise do I see it pass above my shoulder;
and carrying it, I find it especially fit to grasp in my hand.
All my life I have received much of your upholding strength,
and now you allow it to hold up my failing body — can such kindness be measured?