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 · 100 Chinese characters · reading time 1 min
Dongguk Isangguk Jip (Collected Works of Minister Yi of the Eastern Country) Latter Collection, Book 10 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 examination hall of that year —
when the ants' battle was at its height, who would become a guest of my gate?
Only after a thousand siftings and ten thousand winnowings were you at last chosen and raised up.
You bowed in the palace courtyard and received the wine the king bestowed,
then spread glorious wings and flew, crying long, your voice ringing high.
And now you open a feast and raise the cup to offer wishes for long life —
this feeling I have truly received.
The old presiding examiner, mellow with wine, makes merry,
and calls again for fine paper, wetting with ink its ice-white surface.
Now at last I believe that graduates are a good field and a good house.
I rise and leave the throng of singing girls, fragrance lingering in my sleeves,
and as I would go they support me at my side.
Laughable, this withered old man —
the shoulders of Hongya (洪崖) are high, fit to be patted in drunkenness.