Yetgeul › Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) › Latter Collection, Book 8
On the Winter Solstice, Sending Several Almanacs to the Two Academicians Bak and Jeong, with a Quatrain Written at the End of the Letter and Sent to Them Both冬至曆若干。各寄朴,丁兩學士。書後書一絶。兼簡兩公。
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 8 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.
豈意七旬餘。還看九幅書。奉君因自約。歲備手中舒。
How was I to know that, past seventy, I would look again upon a book of nine folds? As I present it to you, I promise myself that year by year I shall have one to open in my hand.