Written on the Third Day of the Third Month of the Year of Sin-chuk, Sending My Eldest Son Ham Off to His Post as Magistrate of Hongju辛丑三月三日。送長子涵以洪州守之任有作。
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 · 90 Chinese characters · reading time 0.9 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.
The shadow of the sun has come to the tops of the mulberries and the elms,
and weeping I part from my child Ham.
I ask you, where is it that you go?
To the far, far south of the sky.
To be given charge of a district is an honour for you,
but how am I to bear this parting?
This old man, grown as old as he can grow—
how can he stay and wait out a term of three years?
Knowing beforehand that this is a parting forever,
my heart is broken through—what am I to say?
Go well, and come well back to the court,
and sit in a deep seat in the offices.
See that you do not let the family name fall,
but make others think of you as the son of such a house.
I shall not see it with my own eyes,
yet how should I not know of it even under the ground?
Clearness and purity come first;
next after them, carefulness and humility.