Respectfully Replying to the Crown Prince's New Year's Day Poem奉和王太子元日令製
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 · 74 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 9 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.
I have lived in retirement a long while now, and had not heard that there was a poem composed for New Year's Day. Only after New Year's Day had passed was I able, through another, to see the excellent work.
I therefore greatly congratulate you that your sacred learning is renewed day by day and that your writing blossoms out surpassingly; this is truly a boundless blessing for the altars of the state. Old though my body is, I cannot keep from clapping my hands and dancing, and looking back, words of praise come out of my mouth before I know it. Respectfully following the rhymes, I have made four poems and present them to the Drafter (舍人) at his side.