The Middle Book補閑集 卷中

At the New Year and at the winter solstice the several prefectures and protectorates (牧·都護府) would as a rule compose letters of congratulation to the chancellor's office (相府). The letter that the prefecture of Sangju sent up to the Jinyang office said:

"Your writing is fine as a silver hook, your mirror clear as a mirror of jade. You took charge of the garrison where the northern waters come, and you calmed the wind and waves of the flatfish sea (鰈海). You led along the western shore and opened the way, and the sun and moon of the turtle palace came forth."〔Diviners call the barbarians the northern waters. In the beginning the duke by a strange stratagem drove the troops back, and bore the royal carriage to Hwasan above Mokhae in the western capital.〕

Again: "You aided the restoration of the royal house (卯金, the graph of Liu), and drove back the slighting of the old barbarians from without. Heaven and earth are rolled up and enter your gate, so that a house of a hundred thousand myriad chariots (乘) could not be called much. You have borne up the walls and the palace and set them in the midst of the sea, one apart from the thirty-six grotto heavens (洞天)."〔In the new capital the duke ran a parapet along the river and also built the palace. Its royal sleeping hall and its main hall were all raised by the duke, who poured out his own wealth and sent his retainers to do it.〕

Again: "You have swept the clouds from the northern mountain and washed the sun of the eastern sea. Heaven, about to offer up music, sent down little girls who sing and dance〔There were a dozen and more little girls, barely six or seven years old, and all of them good at singing and dancing. They did not seem to be eaters of food cooked over fire.〕, and earth too offered up an omen and made the great treasures of silver and cinnabar well up."〔The duke heard that treasure was found at Mount Uian. He ordered artisans to dig there, and they got white silver and yellow cinnabar.〕

Again: "Your house hands down a gate where painted halberds stand, and all the world are guests with jade hairpins. You moved the capital and set the steep places at your back, and so opened apart a heaven and earth without troubles. You founded schools and reared men of talent, and so entrusted to them the sun and moon of a time of peace."〔The moving of the capital and the founding of the schools both came out of the duke's planning. He sent his retainers to build the school hall (黌舍), and then brought in its endowment.〕

The duke gathered the letters of congratulation from all the districts and prefectures and protectorates, and had the men of letters of his house grade them. Sangju's was first in every one, because it set down the facts.

Lord Choe, the chancellor and supreme pillar of state, stood at the summit of fame and wealth, yet he quietly honored the rising above the dust, and the language of his poems was clear and lovely. One evening the wind was clear and the moon bright, and the pines and bamboos sounded of themselves. Without knowing it he chanted a quatrain:

The moonlight that fills the yard is a candle without smoke. The mountain light that enters my seat is a guest I did not call. And the zither of the pines plays on beyond the score. I can only hold it dear; I cannot hand it on to another.

Before the duke took charge of the state, in the winter month of the jeongmi year, he was lodging at his villa in Gajo-ri. Sitting at night, he saw the gentlemen Im and Jo and Yi talking around the brazier, and he wrote this out and showed it to them:

Dragons rise, tigers crouch, ranged high and ample. A stout spirit can melt the red of phoenix charcoal (鳳炭). Do not strive like swallows and bats over dawn and dusk. Better to leave your going and your staying to Heaven.

The setting of the words is marvelous and the placing of the meaning is clear and stout, and there is a grand and uncommon ring in it. That the duke did not strive with the mean and the petty, but took the mandate of Heaven meekly and came into the great work, can be seen in this one couplet. Heaven watched over him and helped him before anything had taken shape, and made him speak these words without his own knowing. How does this differ from the dream of the golden banner (金幢)?

The duke's twelve towers stand ranged thick with pearl and kingfisher green, and strange flowers and rare plants steam their red and bask their green. It is as if one had risen lightly to the Jasper Terrace (瑤臺) and were gazing upon Okcheong (玉淸), and ear and eye cannot give its shape. Yet this is only the common thing in a marquis's house, and not worth calling strange. But the holy spring that flows into the pond in front, and the uncanny birds that fly and cry on the peak behind — these must be the work of father Heaven and mother Earth, who made a stream and a hill apart to furnish a joy outside the world.

In the gabin year, at the turn from spring to summer, when the hundred flowers were at their height, he opened a splendid banquet for the two councils (兩府). He called together some forty men of taste and letters of the day, scored a line on a candle, and had them compose on the moon and the flowers. When the pleasure was at its height he made a poem and showed it to the guests:

Hard pressed by the call to the water pavilion and its windy rail, I have spent my flowing years in a heap of documents. Red cherries and purple bamboo shoots — their season is passing now. Red mallow and crimson pomegranate — their form too is fair. Long sick, I shrink instead from asking guests to drink. Idle by nature, I love most to sleep hearing the orioles. A good season and a strong day are hard to have twice. Let me hurry after the open flowers and be a drunken immortal.

In the late summer of the gabin year the long rain would not stop, and the duke made a poem:

The muggy heat has beaten and steamed a long while. The shadowed clouds will not take back the rain. The market is destitute, and the old men of the fields clamor. The river is swollen, and the fishing boats are loud. Mosquitoes and gnats settle on window and desk. Toads come into the kitchen. When will this burning heat be rolled away, so that I may put a hand to my brow and climb the tiered tower?

The duke's cool pavilion suits the heat and his high tower suits the rain, so that he might seem not to know the hardship of the people. Yet now he has spoken of heat and rain in full detail, and has come even to putting a hand to his brow and climbing the tower. In this one may see his heart for ordering the realm in balance and saving the age.

A poet of the present day gave this judgment: "Duke Munan, Yu Seungdan — his words are strong and his meaning pure, and he uses his allusions with precision and economy. Duke Jeongsuk, Kim Ingyeong — whenever he sets a word down he will have it clear and new, so that every piece he brought out startled the age. Duke Munsun, Yi Gyubo — his force is stout and his language grand, and he makes his meanings new and strange. The academician Yi Illo — his words all win by their form, and he handles allusion as though by spirit; and though there are places where he treads the furrows of the ancients, the skill of his polishing is bluer than the indigo it came from. Yi Gongno the royal secretary — his language is firm and fair, and he is best of all at proclamations (演誥) and at parallel prose (對偶). The Hallim academician Kim Geukgi — he weaves his words clear and open, and the more he says the richer it grows. The remonstrancer Kim Gunsu — his words and his meanings are mild and ample. Master O Sejae and the retired scholar An Sunji — they are rich and thick. The court historian Yi Yunbo and Master Im Chun — they are plain and antique, precise and outstanding. The rectifier of omissions Jin Hwa — clear, grand and splendid, and his changing forms come out a hundred ways. All these were the great masters of their time."

To see the marvel of their touch one must look in the large works. Their short pieces and quatrains are not enough to judge the skill or the clumsiness of a great hand. Yet this book stops at a few volumes, and what it carries is an outline only. So it sets down no more than a few of their quatrains, to show the several houses in each form. Their long pieces and great rhymes are carried each in his own collection, and are not gathered here.

Duke Munan was a mirror of human duty in his letters and in his conduct. He once said to a close friend, "What I would practice to the end of my life is only the two words: do not deceive."

When the duke was still of low station he passed the house of Bak Inseok (朴仁碩) the minister. Bak had an eye for men and received him with every courtesy. When people asked why, he said, "This man is like a holy pearl that lights up the night. One seeks it and cannot get it. How much less dare one bring it to oneself!"

The duke once wandered to Hyeolgu Temple and matched the rhymes on the board there:

The land has drawn in a road of ten days. The sky is low, and goes a foot off, a neighbor. On a rainy night I still see the moon. On a windy day no dust rises. The last day and the first I reckon by the tide. Cold and warm I set down by the grasses. Through the doings of the barbarians I look at the world's affairs, and I envy the man who lies in the clouds.

When he was commissioner of the Middle Circuit he made his round through □ Fortress〔One letter of the name is lost, and only its shape is handed down.〕 and matched a poem written on the wall:

Passing a second time, I trouble them for the night's attendance, and pine torches light the way on either side. Men with spears at the thigh are the new guard. Men with swords at the waist are the old rank. All alike await the wadding of a cold year. Who will share out the millet of a frugal year? In drawing from the people there is not even a small bounty, and each time I am ashamed to press the goose-yellow wine.

Coming to Boryeong to lodge, he wrote:

By day I set out from Haepung-hyeon. Braving the night I came to Boryeong. The bamboo cried, and the wind woke me from sleep. The clouds dripped, and the rain held up my going. In the evening haze my head grew heavy. In the morning sun my bones were light a while. Now I know that this body is old and sick, and knows only how to foretell cloud and clear.

Looking up to the royal composition (聖製) that King Yejong inscribed at Seungga Grotto, he carried on the rhymes:

Up the steep stone gallery I go treading the clouds. The splendid building neighbors the sky, like a magic city (化城). The autumn dew drifts light, and a thousand li are fresh. The evening sun soaks far off, and one river is bright. The haze that ripples in the void joins the ears of incense. The birds that cry in the valley take turns at the chime. I envy the high monk the matter upon his heart: name and gain on the road of the world, he has forgotten them all.

Matching the exchanged poems of Duke Munjeong at Dongnak Garden, he wrote:

On the moss is carved the tablet of red letters. In the jar is hidden the immortal of the white sun. Clear pleasure he shares with his guests, but true joy is the winning of the whole of Heaven. Rain in the yard, and the plantain sounds first. The garden clears, and haze rises of itself from the grass. The peach blossoms and the flowing water are far off; he turns the boat of Mureung back again.

Matching Duke Munjeong's poem at the gathering of men of his own graduation year, he wrote:

With Ban's axe, who shall pick out the hero of an age? The holy chun tree alone stands high among all timbers. Peace and peril and the ordering of them hang upon this day, and the fame of general and minister belongs to our duke. How often has he turned the jade bow-case and tamed the dogs and swine? At times he leaves a pearl of speech to waken the children. Reckon it up: in all things there is nothing wanting. Lifting the cup, I pray only that his years have no end.

Matching the poem on moving bamboo, he wrote:

I look up to you, and there is a painting full of grace; I doubt that the bamboo grew without a root. My love for you is no common feeling, and I call you by your title and not by your name. A tender coolness comes back to pillow and mat. The thick heat draws away from eaves and pillar. Long have you embodied the Way and emptied your heart; the milfoil's spirit counts out its four in vain.

Duke Jeongsuk, as left royal secretary, went out to be military commissioner of the Northeast Circuit. Hearing that Yi Gongno the libationer had taken over the office of throat and tongue (喉舌) in his place, he made a poem and sent it to him:

A letter comes back a thousand li under a sky of one wild goose: a new secretary has taken the place of the old secretary. That I am put aside for want of talent is shame enough, yet I turn to the court and hail its getting a worthy man.

Rising at dawn, he wrote:

In the jade tent the lamp burns low, and I enter the land of sleep, where in peace I bore up with my own hands the light of the crimson robe. The dawn horn before the gate is a rogue past all bearing. It chokes and breaks the cloudy sky, and a whole dream is gone.

The Muil do (無逸圖) that screened the back of the royal seat in Daegwan Hall had fallen to ruin. The king wished to have the duke write it out, and tested his hand. The duke made poems, wrote them on two panels, and presented them:

The carriage is heavy, and the worn-out horse runs but a short way. The sky is high, and the crane's longing is long. How many times has this old coat been washed? It still carries the scent of the royal censer.

And again:

The flowers of the garden are red brocade and embroidery. The willows of the palace are blue silken cords. The throat and tongue may be clever a thousand ways, yet the spring oriole is better at it than a man.

Some say the duke could not put the seats of power out of his mind, but it is not so. The duke's nature was clear and lovely, and the language of his poems was like it. He may be called a man clear as water within and without, whom no dust can spot. How should he have been tangled in the seats of power? Confucius, if he was three months without a lord, was restless. Du Zimei, in cold and want, did not forget in a single line the great duty of lord and subject. How much more a man of name and rank such as the duke: though he was away in the provinces, it was right that he should long and long again with a heart that loved his king.

Once at Naksan, when the rite for the king's long life was over, he made this:

The prayer of Hwabong (華封) in its pure faith moves the heaven of awakening. I bear up the censer, and two streams of tears wet the incense smoke. Let me take at once the three thousand years of tortoise and crane and reckon them the first year of my king.

His heart of love for the king may be seen here in outline.

Again, when he was demoted and made prefect of Sangju, he passed the Deoktong post station on the road and wrote a quatrain on the wall:

How should I turn to the blue heaven with a grudge? Banished, I still have a whole walled town in my charge. When will the bell pavilion (鈴閣) be the chancellery (黃閣), and the prefect's walk become the chancellor's walk?

Two graduates passing the Deoktong station saw this poem and chanted it over a long while in admiration, and said, "'When will the bell pavilion be the chancellery' — this one line seems not skillfully made. And from the bell pavilion to climbing the chancellery, how vast is the space between!" Their friend said, "This is the duke's poem-omen (詩讖). It is not for the likes of you to know." Not long after, he was indeed raised to be chancellor.

In the spring of the gapjin year I left my post at Sangju, and passing the post station I saw the duke's own hand. I was moved and grieved, and I covered it with green gauze and inscribed a quatrain there. Three years after, in the summer of the jeongmi year, I was appointed libationer of the national academy and academician of the Ungak, and then received the baton and axe and went out to guard the Southeast Circuit, and matched two more quatrains. In the spring of the musin year I was made right chancellor of Munchang, and receiving the edict I went up to the palace and left one more quatrain. All of them are on the wall now.

At the assembly of the heads of the list (龍頭會) no other guest may take part. The house of the duke's nephew, Hwangbo Gwan the head of the list, held this gathering, but the duke had passed as the second man and could not go. So he made a quatrain and sent it:

They tell me your house has honored guests, and the cassia grove is all one branch of spring. Now I cannot join the high assembly, and I grudge the more that I was second in my year.

Duke Munsun's collected works already go about in the world. Look at his poems and his prose, and they are like the sun and the moon: there is nothing left to praise.

The regulated verse of our day has tone rhyme and parallel matching within its five or seven syllables, so that one must look down and look up, bore and carve, to meet the rule. Even a man of great timber and mighty vessel cannot follow his own meaning and let his words go free and lay open what is marvelous within, and so such verse is commonly without bone or spirit. From his youngest years, whenever the duke ran his brush he brought out a new meaning. His words came forth more and more, and his force ran the stouter. Even inside the marking line of tone and meter, carving fine and building with craft, he was still bold and free, strange and steep. Yet to call the duke a talent born of Heaven and beyond his fellows is not said of his regulated verse. It is said of the long pieces in the old measures and of the hard themes on stiff rhymes, where he let his meaning run and swept off a hundred sheets at once, never treading after the ancients, standing alone and finished by Heaven.

And with all this he was humble and set himself below others, and if there was a single good thing in a man he was sure to praise it, as though it came from above himself. In his twentieth year he made the Guk sujae jeon (麴秀才傳). When the court historian Yi Yunbo first passed the examination he modeled on it and made the Mujang gongja jeon (無腸公子傳). The duke saw it and called it very good, and he always chanted it among the men of letters and said, "Lately we have got a man who can write. Yi Yunbo is truly the stuff of a good historian."

Again, when he was in the Edict Office (誥院) together with Duke Munan, the Duke of Jinyang held Seon assemblies (禪會) at the three temples Bojesa, Gwangmyeongsa and Seobotongsa. When the assemblies were over, the duke asked the two lords and Yun Uil the lecturer to make the placards (枋) for the three gatherings. Yu made the Gwangmyeongsa placard, and the men of that time set Yu's placard below the duke's. Yet the duke saw it and praised it and sighed over it, and said openly wherever he went, "In this piece I fall far short of Master Yu."

When the duke was a Hallim academician, Son Deukji the academy officer matched his five long poems on Early Tea (早茶). The duke was startled and sighed and said, "Until now I did not know that Son had so high a talent."

The duke's nature was upright and straight, fair and clear, and one may see that his praise of the good and his rebuke of the bad came out of what Heaven gave him. The ancients said, "Men of letters make light of one another." That was said of common and ordinary fellows, and of them only.

Kim Taesin, a graduate, matched Xu Yanguo's Song of the Yumeiren Grass and offered it to Duke Munsun as a gift of introduction. At that time the court historian Yi Yunbo went to call on the duke, and the duke brought it out and showed it to him. The court historian borrowed the scroll and brought it away, and I saw the poem at the court historian's house and at once matched it in seven pieces and sent them up. The court historian passed them to the duke, and the duke approved them and wrote out a long letter on purpose, and sent the Hallim academician Ha Cheondan to carry the letter and tell me: "The rhymes of this poem are stiff, and anyone who writes finds it hard to match them. Looking at what you have made, the words and the meaning are marvelous. Even if Li Bai and Du Fu were set to make it, there would be nothing to add." He also threw off a long poem, and his praise went much too far.

When I went to give my thanks, he came out to meet me with his shoes on the wrong feet, and he held me fast and opened the seats and drank with me. He brought out all his drafts and showed them and said, "I am deeply ashamed that we have known each other so late. Long ago Jeon Iji could write well, and the men of that time did not know it, and I alone knew it. Now I look at your face and cannot tell that there is an outstanding talent in it. This is truly a man who hides his virtue."

Some years later the duke was appointed libationer of the national academy, and I became an instructor. One day, over official business, he sat in the hall and said, "The other day, at the banquet in the house of Yu the remonstrancer, I ran my brush and made a lyric on the Crystal Cup (水精杯). Everyone matched it and showed it, and you alone did not match it. How was that?" In alarm and awe I took his command, and at once matched it in seven pieces and presented them. The duke praised and sighed without end, and passed them round the Edict Office and said, "This poem was not made by a man of the present world." So did he cherish and urge on those who came after him.

Duke Munsun, at the gathering of Yu and Yun and the others of his graduation year, matched the six pieces that Im Gyeonggyeom the assistant councillor had written on his bed screen (寢屛).

Liezi Rides the Wind

From of old the realm of the Way has honored the leaving of the body. Why must a man ride the void before he is holy? If you would look for Yu Kou (禦寇) at the head of the wind, then the birds that fill the sky are true men too.

Tao Qian Strains Wine Through His Headcloth

Strained, it is wine; worn, it is a headcloth. The telling of the two apart I leave to other men. No matter that a stain is left upon my head: this body has clung to wine a whole life long.

Ziyou Calls on Dai Andao

The savor of seeking a man lies in the snowy stream. Had he seen him then and there, it would have ended in one laugh. Do not say he turned his oar because his pleasure was spent. He came to the gate and turned straight back, and the meaning has no end.

Pan Lang Rides a Donkey

If Langxian (閬仙) had loved the three flowering peaks, one look at their height would have been enough. To sit astride a lame donkey backwards was truly a fine thing: he would put his body into the picture and make a show of it.

The academician Yi Illo's Riding the Mood on the Shan Stream

At Shanyin the snow and the moon mingle their cold light. His pleasure spent, he turned the lone boat back again. Why must a man raise his brow and meet a thing with the eye? The thousand worlds in their vastness are one hair's tip.

The Mad Guest of Siming

Ten thousand li under the sky of Wu, he goes back with a single oar in the late autumn when the lotus flowers wither and fall. The wind and the moon of Jinghu (鏡湖) had no owner from the first. Why did he have to beg for one branch before his lord?

Old Traces at Shanyin

This body differs from the body before it at every thought. Between a glance down and a glance up, the traces of men are old already. Thanks to the silver-hook writing left upon the cocoon paper, the wind and the moon of Shanyin are new in every age.

Wind and Rain at Xisai

Autumn deepens, and the purple scales of Lize (笠澤) are fat. The clouds are gone from the western hill, and a sliver of moon shines. Ten widths of rush sail, a thousand acres of jade: the red dust surely cannot reach the straw cape.

Duke Munsun's new meanings enter the marvelous, and the academician Yi's governing words are clear and fair.

The academician Yi's Monthly Rose

I ask Ge Hong about ten thousand bushels of cinnabar: in what year did he bury them deep in this small garden? Its fragrant root has taken the color of cloud and sunset glow, and so has made an immortal flower, red and never old.

Duke Munyeol wrote:

The good season can hardly come near Tao Qian's chrysanthemum. The fragrant word is still far off from Lu Kai's plum. It does not wait for old Yin (殷翁) to boast of his fine conjuring: out of its season its red beauty opens of itself.

Duke Munan wrote:

Once it followed Yaohuang and Weizi and played the coquette in the mild wind; now one sees it all alike as the empty color of illusion. Another day it will open best in the midst of snow, and then one knows it is no red of a passing moment.

Duke Munsun wrote:

The winter plum and the autumn chrysanthemum cunningly brave the cold, and the light thin red of spring can no longer touch them. Since this flower has the four seasons to itself, the beauty that leans on one season is not worth looking at.

Duke Jeongsuk wrote:

After the Lord of Spring had gone there was no way to find him, and only now do I know that your house is his master. If it were not so, how could you keep creation to yourself and rear the spring of four seasons in a single pot?

The academician Yi's poem speaks of cinnabar and then of cloud and sunset glow, and this is what is called a likeness within a likeness. If it was made on another man's rhymes, his pressing of the word hong (洪) is very fine. Duke Munyeol's poem is as though it said that the flower opens in the seventh and eighth months. Duke Munan's poem stops at spring and winter, yet its meaning is already complete. Duke Munsun said the whole of it, and the savor of his words is deep and strong. Duke Jeongsuk also spoke of the four seasons, and there is a new meaning in his as well.

Duke Munyeol matched the Cat of the monk Hyeso and wrote:

The mole cricket and the ant have the Way, the wolf and the tiger have kindness. One need not send off the false before one seeks the true. The eye of wisdom in our master makes no division, and thing by thing they all show forth a clean and pure body.

Duke Munsun's Toad

Its lumpy shape is fit to be hated, and its crawling is rough going too.〔One letter here is lost, and only its shape is handed down.〕 All you insects, do not make light of it: it knows the way into the moon.

Misu's Ant

When it stirs its body, oxen must be fighting. When its hole is deep, one fears the hill will fall. Fame is a pearl of how many coils? Wealth and rank are a dream just now come back.

Duke Munsun's drawing of the shape is very skillful. The academician Yi used allusion in every line. Duke Munyeol lodged his meaning in the Buddha, and his speaking of principle is the deepest of all. In general, in pieces that body forth a thing, using allusion is not so good as speaking of principle, and speaking of principle is not so good as drawing the shape. Yet whether it is well or ill done lies only in the framing of the meaning and the making of the words.

The academician Yi's Soyo Garden

That day Jieyu told Jian Wu that a delicate holy being dwelt on far Guye. Only his spirit stood high beside the Fen River, and far off he saw with his own eyes that skin like snow.

Duke Munsun's Dongnak Garden

I call the neighbors to draw the cold water of one spring〔The well in the garden was left open for the neighborhood to draw from.〕, and the clear wind that fills my couch I share with my guests. Only the joy in the stillness of this famous garden have I never let another hear of easily.

The Hallim academician Kim's Cheongchwi Hall

Even the flying spring that comes down the ridge has feeling. It pierces the wood and falls into the pool with a clear ringing. If one sees that the one nature makes no division, then waves eight feet across are the four seas.

The academician Yi's strange words and marvelous meaning come wholly out of the Nanhua pian. Duke Munsun came out of a new savor of his own. The Hallim academician Kim used the words of the Buddha. The ancients said, "Su Zizhan, though his words are vast and have meaning to spare, comes near to the Buddha, and is not to be called a work in the line of the Airs and the Sao (風騷)." But a poem like Duke Munyeol's Cat was an answer to the monk Hyeso, and the Hallim academician Kim's Cheong Hall poem was inscribed in a temple, so there it was right to speak in the words of the Buddha. Their other works should not be shallow or strange.

Duke Munyeol's Chrysanthemum

In one night of autumn wind ten thousand trees were bare, and the chrysanthemums had opened in barely two or three clumps. Fansu had no heart in her, and went off after the spring; Chaoyun alone keeps Lord Su company.

Duke Munsun wrote:

The Blue Lord has charge of the flowers and cuts and carves them many ways. How is that like the White Lord taking charge of flowers as well? The wind of metal blows bleak and bleak, day after day. What warmth of the sun did he take to set this fair flower free?

The Hallim academician Kim wrote:

It grieves that its fragrance does not reach the wind of spring. The dew is cold and the frost is bitter, and its jade face is wretched. At the year's end, who alone knows its fragrant heart? On the last clump there is still a bee that loves the flower.

The academician Yi's After the Double Ninth

Do not take the beauty that is left and blame the sun and the moon. One handful of autumn fragrance is long left over still. The hearts of men do not follow the season; they change of themselves. Why did Longyang (龍陽) weep so bitterly over the fish he caught first?

In old times and now men often liken a flower to a beautiful woman. Duke Munyeol used the matter of the beauties, and though the meaning is fine and fitting, the matter itself is a straw dog. Misu used the matter of Longyang, and among the poets' likenesses that lie outside the expected meaning this is the one that wakens most. He also wrote on the Parrot: "The cleverer its speech, the harder its lot; one may well believe that Han Fei died of his Shuinan (說難)." All such are of this kind. Kim's poem has in it the meaning of a poet lodging his own case, and one reads it and is moved to sorrow. Duke Munsun used no allusion and took no likeness; he simply bored straight through the heart of Heaven.

The academician Yi's Plum Blossom

The Blue Lord holds his feeling in and makes a flower of jade, and the one in white robes is truly in the house of Shi. How often has it made the drunken commandant's (廷尉) dim eyes take it for a white sleeve slanting among the trees?

My late grandfather matched Kim the privy councillor's Jade Plum and wrote:

On the icy skin of Guye she has made a robe of snow, and her fragrant lips drink up pearls from the dawn dew. She must hate that common stamens are dyed with the red of spring, and would ride a crane and fly toward the Jasper Terrace (瑤臺).

Duke Munsun's Pear Blossom

At first I thought snow had clung to the branches in splendor; then there was a clear fragrance, and I knew it was a flower. Coming on the wind it is easy to see, piercing the green trees. Falling, it mixes with the white sand and is hard to make out.

The Hallim academician Kim's Damson Blossom

A bleak wind and a cold rain wet the withered root, and one tree of mad flowers has set spring free alone. What is to be done? A strange fragrance has come from Juku Isle (聚窟洲), and in the palace of Han one sees Lady Li again.

The academician Yi Misu's — that is, Yi Illo's — Damson Blossom

Once he drove a cloud chariot with deer of jade, and he has been in the Jasper Palace (瓊宮) eighteen years and more. He was first born under the tree, and took it for his surname, and from then on the immortal damson spread thick and wide.

In the two plum-blossom poems the allusions differ, but both speak by taking the color. In the two damson-blossom poems there is depth and shallowness in the allusions, and better and worse divide of themselves. Misu spoke only of the damson and not of the flower, so however deep his allusion, where is the skill in it? Duke Munsun in the main did not like to use allusion; he honored the new meaning, and that alone.

When Lord Xia Ying of Song was still of low station he called on Lord Wensu, and Wensu said, "There is the air of the high offices (臺閣) in your writing. One day you will surely rise." And it turned out as he said.

When Duke Munsun was adjutant in the headquarters at Wansan, he received the commissioner's tally (符) and became the officer for felling timber at Byeonsan, and he made a quatrain:

Power lies in leading soldiers, and may well be boasted of. The office is called the felling of trees, and the shame of it is plain. Byeonsan from of old is truly a storehouse of Heaven. Let me pick out the long timbers well, ready for ridgepole and rafter.

He also wrote:

In the cold of dawn the empty pavilion gives a clear sound. In the clearing evening the long sky rolls up the mottled clouds. Outside the gate, how many men have lost their fingers to the frost? I am ashamed: I still sit wrapped in silk with the incense at my side.

Matching a friend, he wrote:

Work hard and make letters your business. Do not chafe that your rank is not yet high. Know this: even a three-legged cauldron was cast out of a hair as fine as an awl.

The air of a chancellor in the duke was already shown in these three poems.

I happened to get the first volume of the Hallim academician Kim's collection and looked at it. At the head of the volume were gathered eight palace songs (宮詞). They all held meanings the ancients had opened out already, and the language was shallow and narrow besides, and in my heart I quietly thought little of them. Little by little I opened on to the second and third sheets, and when I saw long pieces such as Song in Drunkenness and Setting Out Old Days on Hard Rhymes at the Hayang Villa, the words and the meaning were clear and broad. Afterward I saw eight or nine volumes more, and the clear words were vast and wide, and one might dip from them and never use them up. Truly his gift was rich and ample.

Were it not so, how should Jin the rectifier of omissions have chanted thus in longing for the academician?

He chants his poems and lies in a poor lane, and a bracing air pierces the house and floats. It climbs to the sky and gathers into dew, and scatters and becomes the autumn of the world of men.

The academician's Written on the Road

On a road all of green moss the hooves slip, and the cicadas break off and take up again as the way rises and falls. Even the women of a poor village have thoughts enough: smiling, they set their thorn hairpins straight and look in the willow stream.

The Old Fisherman

Even the old man of Heaven will not let the old fisherman off, and sends few kind winds on purpose to the rivers and lakes. Do not laugh, sir, that the world of men is steep and hard: his own body too is in the midst of the swift current.

Rising at Dawn

All day long I chanted the Hard Road to Shu, and only when I lay down sideways did I get one body's ease. Instead I hate the loving butterfly upon my pillow: a thousand li of rough road, and it goes to seek the old hills.

Caught by Rain in the Eastern Suburb

The yellow dust spreads far and floods the clear sky. I raise my fan, and the west wind hates to dirty a man. My thanks indeed to the late clouds that could make rain: halfway on the road they washed off the dust that filled my clothes.

Given to the Old Abbot of Mireuksa

The wood's edge is far and faint, and the path winds slow. The place is remote; how should worldly scholars be told of it? Only the crane on the pine in its robe of snow saw you when you first came and wove your hut.

A Moonlit Night in Late Autumn

The sun goes down, and a harsh wind rises at the treetops. The flying frost is thick, and the sound of the leaves is dry. There is no need to open the window and greet the clear moon: these thin bones, now autumn is come, are afraid of the cold at night.

On the Road at Heunghae

Among the mulberries a woman follows a secret path, and a cuckoo comes flying and cries around the tree. It is only telling the farm houses to hurry with their work. What man could paint out the sound of pipe and string?

The words and the meanings are clear and ripe, and carry much of the Airs and the Sao (風騷). In the main there are many long pieces and great rhymes, and pieces on the palace and on wealth and rank are few. So I have set down only these quatrains of hill and field. Looking at his collection, one may wonder whether a stone from another hill has got in among a ridge of massed jade; and that comes only of the poor quality of the man who gathered and picked them.

Kim Sinjeong the head of the list praised Duke Munsun's Fish at Play and wrote:

Slow and listless, the red scales sink and float up again. Men say they have their will and roam at ease. Think closely: there is not a moment's leisure for them. The old fisherman has just gone home, and the heron is scheming next.

Hearing the Oriole

Young lords and royal grandsons sit wrapped in silks and would lean on a sweet song to swell their pleasure. The Lord of Spring too has learned the joys of the world of men, and opened a thousand flowers and sent you out to sing.

He asked me, "Which is the better?" I said, "The oriole poem is shallow and near at hand. The fish poem is grand and deep, and it has besides the savor of comparison (比) and evocation (興), and so is far the better." The head of the list said, "It is not so. In old times and now, all the chantings of the oriole have fallen short of this meaning, and the duke alone has newly bored it out. However grand and deep a meaning may be, if it has been opened out already it is ordinary; however shallow and near it may be, if it is newly bored out it can waken a man." I could not answer. Now that I think of it again, Kim's words were right.

Jeong Jisang the secretariat drafter's New Snow

Last night the auspicious snow came down thick and new, and at dawn the phoenix and the heron give thanks at the palace.〔When the new snow fell they held court and offered their congratulations.〕 Not even a light wind stirs, and the shadowed snow is rolled away. Flowers of white jade open, and ten thousand trees are spring.

This poem is rich and lovely and full of wealth and rank. It is not what Dongpo called a snow poem out of a village school.

The Hallim academician Kim's Snow

Steep ridges and towering peaks come round the walls, and across the sky ten thousand folds of jade are piled in heaps. Where does the water immortal roam toward the dawn? On the river a silver screen has opened slantwise.

Yi Misu's Snow

The evening wind blew the snow and played with it fine and fine, and late at night I quite believed the moon had filled the eaves. Be sure of this: the clearness of a scholar goes through to the bone. A jade flask hangs for nothing upon a crystal blind.

Kim's poem likens the whiteness, Yi's poem likens the clearness, and the poem that likens the clearness is the more bracing.

Yi Misu's The Tea Mill at a Temple

The wheel of wind does not mind that the ant's walk is slow. The moon axe is swung for the first time, and jade dust flies. The play of the Law has of old been truly self-existent: in a clear sky the thunder roars and the snow whirls down.

Picking Chestnuts

After the frost the fruit is out of its husk, red and glossy. At dawn I pick them in the wood, and the dew is not yet dry. I call the children up and open the banked fire. The jade shells burn away and the golden balls burst out.

Letter by letter and line by line it is skillfully carved, and clear to enjoy.

Someone praised an order that the courtesan named Pearl-on-the-Jade-Dish (玉盤珠) be renamed Pearl-in-the-Palm (掌中珠), and wrote:

One bright pearl lies upon a jade dish, and the autumn dew of the Milky Way drips round and round. It rolls a thousand times and ten thousand, and has no fixed place. How is that like moving it to the palm and looking at it there?

This poem seems to be Misu's words, but it is not clearly in the Eundae jip, so most likely Duke Jeongsuk made it.

Matching a Poem of Congratulation to the Third Man on the New List (榜)

Han Xin's banners set their backs to the blue river, and the walls of Yan and the ramparts of Zhao surrendered all at once. Though in the reckoning of merit he stands below Xiao and Zhang, a knight of the realm from of old has rarely had a match.

This poem is not merely carved and polished; the setting of its meaning and its use of allusion are the more marvelous.

The White Peony

The dream of a thousand shameless flowers is empty already, and one clump of fragrant snow stands alone in the spring wind. Taizhen (太眞) has just come out of her bath in the hot spring, and upon her skin of white jade no red is set.

Duke Munsun's Xi Shi Drunk

On her two fair-painted cheeks the tide of wine lies even, and all say it is Xi Shi's body of the old days. She broke the house of Wu with a smile, and that was not enough. Now she comes back — whom does she mean to torment?

Yi Misu's Bamboo in a Pot

In the pot the water brims, and the jade mirror is cold, and with white sand he has banked and reared the green jade of the bamboo. The bank of the Wei and the shore of the Xiang are each a thousand li off. How is that like taking them in turn from the window of a room?

Duke Munsun matched the bamboo in a pot at the house of Bak the assistant (丞) and wrote:

Is there only one way to test how worthy you are? Its hard root endures the cold of a stone pot as well. Within it there is still the meaning of the Xiang River: I will look at it as a lance of jade that stabs straight at the sky.

The academician's poem wakens the eye; the chancellor's poem wakens the heart. Yet in a water pot white sand is fit for rearing sweet flag, not for rearing bamboo. Those who study take only the clear and lovely rhyming words, and forget the meaning.

Duke Munan, at the house of Bak the assistant, feasting Lord Choe the chancellor, matched the poem chanted on the Seosang Flower (瑞祥花) and wrote:

I see the new omen with joy, and spring fills the branches. This morning, sure enough, a good guest has come. The omen of the flower is for one house, the omen of the worthy is for the realm. Who will gather up this love of flowers and turn it all upon men?

This poem too wakens the heart.

The Hallim academician Kim's Waking from Sleep

In the magpie-tail censer the sunk smoke is one green ear. The pine wind brushes past and sets the paper window sounding. Beyond the wood a wild bird calls back the last of my dream and startles and breaks a journey of ten thousand li to Jiangnan.

Im Gije — that is, Im Chun — wrote:

I lay on the couch as though I had fallen, and forgot my body at once. At my noonday pillow the wind came, and my sleep broke of itself. In the dream this body had no place to settle: heaven and earth were all one long pavilion.

Duke Munsun's Spring Sleep

The land of sleep is neighbor above all to the land of drink, and what comes back from the two places is only one body. The ninety days of spring are all a dream, and inside the dream I become a man inside a dream.

Kim's poem has a mixed meaning and is simply a piece on what is at hand. The two poems of Im and Yi have their meaning wholly in the waking from sleep, and Yi's poem can waken a man the more.

Master Im Chun, in a letter he gave to Yi Misu, said, "Though I and you have not read Dongpo, our way of making lines has often come to be much alike already. Can it be anything but that what we got within has quietly fallen in with his?"

Now when I look at Misu's poems, there are seven syllables or five that have come out of the Dongpo jip. When I look at Duke Munsun's poems, there are not four or five syllables that take away Dongpo's words, and yet the bold and soaring air of them and their ample body fall in with Dongpo exactly.

The world says that Chun's prose has got the body of the ancients. Yet look at his prose, and it is all taken away from the words of the ancients. At worst he goes so far as to string some dozens of letters together in a row and make them his own words. This is not getting their body; it is taking their words.

I once called on Duke Munan, and a monk came with the Dongpo jip and asked him about his doubts. He read on until the couplet, "The green pool seems to put me to the test, the white pagoda seems to call me." The duke chanted it over and tasted it two or three times, and said, "Among the poetry collections of old times and now, a new meaning like this is rarely seen. Lately I got the draft poems of the academician Yi Chungyeong — that is, Yi Gyubo — and looked at them, and new meanings, striking and outstanding, were many in them. In his long pieces the force grows the stouter as it comes to the last line, like the feet of a horse that runs a thousand li, just stretched out and racing on the broad road, and then reined in before it is halfway."

Yi Misu's long poem on Mingfei (明妃) says, in outline:

Had she been kept in a house of gold in her young days, the work of Han would have gone empty at the sound of one smile. He did not let the peerless creature stay beside the emperor: Yanshou's (延壽) false painting was true loyalty indeed.

Duke Munsun wrote:

If one woman can make peace with a neighbor, why grudge that a jade-like person was cast to the barbarian sands? The greed of the wolf cub will never know an end. What a pity that the women of the rear palace were shamed for nothing.

The first poem plays with the working of Heaven; the second speaks of the feelings of men.

Duke Munsun's Cicada

I dare not go near the old willow, fearing to startle the cicada on the branch. Do not let it be moved to another tree: it is better to hear one voice whole.

Misu's poem:

Drinking wind, it is truly empty of itself. Sipping dew, it is clean to the utmost. Why does it follow the autumn dawn and cry and cry and never cease?

Misu's poem speaks of the cicada in full detail; Duke Munsun's words are spare and his meaning new.

Jeong Ian the vice director was deep in letters, and his bamboo painted in ink was the most marvelous thing of all. There was once a painted scroll in a marquis's house, and all the court painters (畵史) were in the dark as to what its model was. The vice director saw it and said, "This is a poem of Liu the guest counselor." He recited the poem and matched it against the painting, and part by part there was not a hair's breadth of difference. Then he said, "When a gentleman swings his brush, he takes a poem for his ground as a rule. If a man only traces the model over, he is a craftsman."

Jeong Jisang the secretariat drafter wrote this in his cups:

In the red rain of peach blossoms the birds chatter, and a kingfisher haze lies on the green hills that ring the house. One black gauze cap I am too idle to set straight, and drunk on the flowery bank I dream of Jiangnan.

This poem may be looked at as a picture.

Jin the rectifier of omissions' Wandering on Odaesan

In a painting that year I saw Odaesan, and in the blue-green swept clear of cloud there was high and low. Now I have come where ten thousand ravines race down, and I am glad after all that on the road through the clouds I do not lose my way.

This is what the ancients called thinking of the painting while facing the place itself.

Wondam, a monk who makes poems, said to me, "When the gentlemen of today make poems, they lean on the people and the place names of far-off lands and make them the facts of this country, which is laughable. Duke Munsun, for one, wandering in the south, wrote, 'The autumn frost has dyed all the trees of Wu; the evening rain comes darkly to the hills beyond Chu.' Though the making of the words is clear and far-reaching, Wu and Chu are not this land. It is not so good as what a man of an earlier age wrote on setting out early from Songgyeong: 'At the first going over Mapan the smoke of houses stirs; passing Dagyo, the feeling of the fields comes up.' This is not only new in its words and better in its savor; the words fit exactly."

I answered, "When a poet uses an allusion he need not be stuck fast in its origin; he only lodges his meaning in it. How much more when all under Heaven is one house, and brush and ink use the same letters. What gap is there between that side and this?" The monk agreed.

Jin Hwa the rectifier of omissions judged poems thus: "Where Duke Munsun's Shutting the Gate says, 'At first like a girl swaying and longing for spring, little by little a monk gone bleak into the summer retreat,' it is like holding honey between the teeth: little by little there is savor in it. Where Yi Yuji, matching a poem of the chancellor Giro, says, 'Drowsy, I lean and for a moment take the green jade desk; drunk and held up, I leave behind the crimson gauze skirt,' it is like chewing ice and biting snow, and it makes the ground of a man's heart bracing and free of hindrance. The words that hold honey are not so good as the words that chew ice."

I do not agree with this judgment. Those words about chewing ice the newly risen sort may get once in ten thousand times, if they temper them month by month and carve them day by day. But the words that hold honey came of getting deep into the meaning of shutting the gate, and without a seasoned hand they truly could not be drawn out.

Jin and Yuji and the men of poetic name at that time all matched the chancellor Giro's poem, and the rhyme gun (裙) was the stiffest of all. When it came to using it a second time they all looked hard put to it. Then Yuji drew out this couplet, and Jin was startled and stirred at once, and that is why he said this.

Jin the rectifier of omissions read Yi Chungyeong's poems and wrote:

Chattering and chattering, many words waste the paper and the brush. A beak three feet long only wearies itself. The banished immortal's soaring air is outside all shapes, and one word of his is enough to throw down a thousand champions of verse.

O Yegong, a graduate, said, "May I hear what the soaring air is, and what the one word?" Jin said, "Su Zizhan, judging paintings, said, 'Mojie got it outside the shapes; where the brush had not reached, the air had swallowed it already.' Poetry and painting are one. Du Zimei's poems, even within five syllables, still have an air that swallows what lies outside the shapes, and the long pieces Yi Chungyeong made running his brush were likewise got outside the shapes. This is what is called the soaring air. To say one word is to wish it heavy. With those of the world who relish the usual and are charmed by the common one cannot speak of poetry at all — how much less of the air where the brush has not reached!"

An Sunji, the retired scholar of Giam, was a great hand such as the age rarely sees, and he was sparing in pushing another man forward in letters. Yi Misu once asked him by letter and by poem to make the Geupgodang gi (汲古堂記), and though he asked two and three times he still would not answer. When Yi pressed him hard he made the record at last, because he could not help it; but in it he refuted the meaning of the Geupgodang poem that Yi had made, and called it wrong.

The Hallim academician Kim Geukgi was of the same district as An and of the same time, yet in An's collected works there is not one piece exchanged with Kim. Only for Master O Sejae, once he had seen him, did his admiration never stop.

Seeing the poems of Jin Hwa of the Okdang, he said, "Your talent has passed Yunxi (筠溪) already. Go a little further and you may reach Dongpo."

Seeing Duke Munsun's drafts, he made a short preface, which says in outline: "He opens his mouth and it is a finished piece, a hundred poems in a moment. Heaven let him loose and the spirits gave it to him. He is clear and new, outstanding and soaring, and men call the duke a Li Taibai; and that in the main sets down the fact. Yet in my own words: when he chants in his cups a mad sea tosses and a brocade belly shines, and in that they are alike already; but when it comes to the strictness of his meter and the truth and closeness of his parallels, where in all that hurry and want of leisure the labor shows the more, there he seems to go beyond him."

He also made a preface, Reading the Ya Poems (雅詩), which says: "The three hundred poems did not all come out of the mouths of sages and worthies. Yet Zhongni set them all down and made them the classic of ten thousand ages. Can it be for any other reason than that words of praise and reproach open out the truth of the feelings, and move men so closely that they enter deep into the marrow? If that is so, then even a low servant who cuts grass and gathers wood, if his words accord with the Way, is one the sage does not dare to cast out. How much more the works of great worthies and gentlemen, whose letter and meaning are both outstanding and whose flower and fruit match each other — shall these alone not enter the ranks of the Ya and the Song? Lately I got Letian's collection and looked it through. It is mild and ample this way and that, with no trace of hammering and tempering; it seems near and is far; it is splendid and has fruit as well. The six senses of poetry are complete in it."

Giam's words are right. Bai's poems differ only in depth and shallowness as to the meaning of the Feng, the Ya and the Song; in what they have to do with teaching and transforming men they are one.

Du Mu prided himself on the excellence of his own writing, and laughed at Letian's poems as mixed and shallow and vulgar. The men of that time, who looked at the sun with a narrow virtue, all followed him in slander, and said the same thing in a clamor. So even now the poets, who do not so much as know the meaning of what the ancients called "Bai is common," still say, "The mixed talk of Changqing (長慶) — what is there in it to look at?" It is laughable.

Anyone newly learning poetry who wishes to make his force stout may well leave it unread. But for an official or an early awakened man, living at leisure and looking a book through, glad and forgetting his cares, nothing will do but Bai's poems. When the ancients called Lord Bai a talent of men, it was because his words are mild and easy, and because his telling of customs and his setting out of the principle of things fit the feelings of men exactly.

Now look at Duke Munsun's poems. In the soaring excellence of their air and ring they match Taibai, and in their making clear of the Way and virtue and their setting out of admonition by indirection they fall in roughly with Lord Bai. He may be said to have both the talent of Heaven and the talent of men.

The court historian Yi Yunbo once gave this judgment to another man: "In days past I made poems together with the Hallim academician Yi Chungyeong and three or four other friends in verse. Yi spoke first and said, 'One rain sent down, and the clouds split open again; a thousand flowers opened, and the sky is at leisure at last.' The whole company laid down their brushes, and to the end not one of them uttered a word.

Later, when I was with Yi in the Forbidden Grove, Gangjong died, and the Edict Office and the Hallim bureau all made elegies (挽詞). Yi wrote, 'I cannot believe that he has gone up to Heaven and will never come back; instead I wonder whether he may be roaming on the moon and will return.' The old men of the office and of the bureau clasped their hands and sighed and agreed. At that time Jin Hwa the Hallim academician also wrote, 'The Nine Springs (九原) in one morning became a thousand ages; the four seas for three years have stopped the eight sounds.' But that fell far short of Yi's, and besides, to say the Nine Springs was wrong."

Yi Misu, following the rhymes of Choe the state councillor's matching of Changli's Spring Snow, wrote:

The six-pointed flakes rejoice in a new omen, and in the three stanzas one remembers the old song. How lovely, so fine, to see it race in through the chinks; how one grudges its light as it enters the pond and melts. White and white, it cheats Pan's temples; light and light, it vies with the waist of Chu. Clear and glittering, it pushes back the color of night; dotted and strung, it is laid upon the branches of spring. The mood for rhapsody goes back to Liangyuan (梁苑); the feeling for poems rises at Baqiao (灞橋). Broken scales float upon the boundless water; flying feathers brush the whirlwind. The falling willow down misleads the summer first; the traveling clouds have lost the morning already. Vying in brightness, it dislikes the shining of the moon; playing with its flakes, it hates to be blown by the wind. Where it meets a rise it piles the jade high; along the level it spreads clean silk. Rare goods are heaped up to fill the yard, and one wonders that the reckoning left over is ample after all.

My mother's father Kim Yegyeong wrote:

In the warmth of spring there is snow after all, and it would make the song of Yingzhong (郢中). Falling fine, when it dries it piles together; turning slow, when it wets it is ready to melt. The rocks lift the crown of a salt tiger; the walls wind round the waist of a jade dragon. The willow has lost its threads of yellow gold; the plum has added branches of white jade. Han's (韓) carriage drags a white sash; Luo's (羅) staff has turned into a silver bridge. It sprinkles hard, and I shut the window close; fearing to be wet, I shake my sleeve again and again. The force of the cold still suits the twelfth month; the light of daybreak is ahead of the morning already. The wind is swift, and I start at its sudden beating; wrapped in the haze, I do not notice it flying. To inscribe a poem, it is hard to set the brush down; to paint the scene, the silk would be put to trouble. Well may it enter the heart and be clean; but do not cling so thick to the temples and the hair.

Hwangbo Hang of the Dongmun wrote:

The cold shuts the tongue of the oriole; the light congeals upon the butterfly's waist. I hear one tune of the song of Ying (郢); I carve three strains of Zhang's (張) chanting. Powdered leaves blow over the ridge of plums; silver waves roll up the five bridges.〔Some lines are left out.〕 The tiles are covered, and the ditch is level with the bank; the window is bright, and the night is morning of itself. Rainbow skirts dance past the sun; willow down flies after the wind. Beforehand it tells the omen of a rich year, and at the brush tip the tongue is ample already.

Yang Namil the drafting attendant wrote:

Green coils of hair bury the mountain tops; a white sash binds the waist of the gallery. The eye is full of a thousand worlds of silver; the whole wood is ten thousand branches of jade. The ice floes will surely form by noon, and the lending of one's delight does not last out the morning. The cold helps the chanting shoulders to rise; the lightness flies after the dancing sleeves. Entering the poem, it is □□ willow down; climbing into the painting, its color bewilders the silk. The fields on four sides are white as a chessboard, and one wonders instead whether the black roads are the more.

In the first two poems every line is fine. In the last two only the twelve couplets are clear and poignant.

In the midsummer of the gimi year the thousand-petaled pomegranate flowers were in full bloom at the house of the Duke of Jingang. The duke called in the Hallim academician Yi Illo, the Hallim academician Kim Geukgi, Yi Damji of the academy, Ham Sun the judicial officer, and Yi Gyubo the graduate-elect, and asked them to chant on them. They drew rhymes at the seats, and the word geum (禽) was the stiffest of all.

The Hallim academician Yi wrote:

A brocade curtain screens the sun at morning; a golden bell wakes the birds at dawn.

Yi the graduate-elect wrote:

Burning incense, it draws the butterflies on a clear day; scattering fire, it startles the birds at night.

Next:

Lightly thrown and lovely — that is the clever butterfly. Fiercely trodden and kept off — that is the idle bird.

Next:

The stamens are many, and it can hardly set fruit. The branch is weak, and cannot bear a bird.

Next:

What sends its fragrance over is the guest at the windy rail. What plays with its shadow is the bird in the noonday yard.

Next:

The green peach (碧桃) keeps the crane company in vain; to the green damson the crab apple comes for nothing.

The couplet of the brocade curtain was set first, and it spread through the capital like the sound of a reed organ. Someone said, "Though this couplet is rich and lovely, the parallels it sets up are like each other and the allusions it handles are close to each other, so it does not escape one of the sicknesses of the poets."

Afterward, on a small peak in the north garden of his house in the Namsan quarter, he opened another pavilion apart and made its awning of white thatch and named it Mojeong (茅亭), and he asked Yi Illo and Yi Gyubo, and Kim Gunsu, Yi Gongno, Kim Yanggyeong and Yi Yunbo, to make records of it. All were noted scholars of the day. The one that Lord Yi Gyubo wrote was set first, and in the end it was carved on a board on the pavilion.

Duke Jeongsuk once said, "In old days Bak Chunnyeong the drafting attendant would be moved to tears as soon as he saw a fine piece by another man, and I am the same."

Hearing his words, I long admired Master Bak, but I did not know what his writing was like. I wished very much to see it, and now I have got one poem, and he was indeed a man deep in poetry.

Inscribed at the Boseong Guest House, Remembering Kim Yu the Prefect

Liuxia Hui did not refuse a post, low though it was. Why use an ox knife to carve a chicken? The sweet pear (甘棠) is just the tree for remembering a man, and Xianshan (峴山) is still the stele where the tears fall. The old men can talk of the teaching he left in his love; the children vie in reciting the poems he left of old. I have heard that Robber Zhi lived long and Yan Hui died young: the principle of Heaven is vast and cannot be known.

On the summit of Paljeonsan there is a high tower. The academician Gwon, who was then inspector of Yeongnam, inscribed this tower and wrote:

The sun and the moon go east and west, and on three sides is water; heaven and earth lie above and below, and on one peak is the tower.

Later men read it as "the above and below of heaven and earth," and do not know that there is savor in the line. Du Zimei's poem Climbing the Tower says, "The clear and the turbid of the two forces are high and low in turn." Above and below is likewise high and low. It should be read as "heaven and earth are above and below in turn," and then the line is marvelous. It is the same with "the sun and the moon go east and west."

Yeonggoksa in Jungwon leans on a sheer cliff and looks down on a green stream, and the building of it is antique and far off. The hall was raised two bays deep with one bay broken off across, and a frame was laid over the void to make a tower. Seen from below it looks as if it hung, and its three corners peck high, a handsbreadth from the sky.

An envoy whose surname was Choe and whose name is not handed down inscribed there:

A temple of a thousand ages on a rock head a thousand fathoms high, facing the river water in front and leaning on the hill behind. Above, it grinds the stars: the roof has three corners. Half out into the void: the tower is one bay.

The look of this temple is drawn here without remainder, and I do not know what words one who inscribes there after him could draw out.

Every spring and autumn the Tripitaka is turned and read and a rite for averting disaster (消災道場) is held, and the court poets (詞臣) of the Edict Office are always ordered to make a hymn of praise (音讚詩) in four rhymes (四韻).

Lord Yi Illo, when he first came up to the Edict Office, said, "The hymn of praise is a praising of the Buddha's virtue. To chant the solemn splendor of the rite, or to look about at the scenery, or to turn the beauty of it upon the king and so set out events and speak of feelings — these are all wrong."

What he made and presented said:

On Yeongsan (靈山) that day the magpie built its nest on his shoulder, and he was clear and bright as a lotus risen out of the water.

Though there is strength in the line and its words, the magpie building on his shoulder belongs to the time of his austerities, and it does not praise the solemn splendor of his ten thousand virtues.

Duke Jeongsuk, Kim Ingyeong, wrote:

The affairs of the Golden Immortal (金仙) of a thousand ages are far away, and today in Haedong they are spread out great again. The green of Busosan is truly Yeongchwisan, and the splendor of Seongyeong Hall is Bogwangmyeong Hall itself.

This used an old matter and made it the matter of today, and it can waken a man.

Chae Bomun the reminder wrote:

The nature is empty and the moon is full: heaven and earth are at dawn. The tree of awakening flowers: the world is spring.

This truly praises the Buddha, and may be said to praise the Law as well. Yet it did not come out of a new meaning.

In the way of the hymn of praise, if a man cannot praise the Buddha jewel (佛寶) alone, it will do to praise the three jewels (三寶) together.

Such is what Jin the rectifier of omissions wrote:

In his two hands the plantain heart opens scroll upon scroll; on his half shoulder the mountain color is his patched robe, layer on layer.

This praises the Sangha jewel.

Duke Munsun wrote:

On the jade case (琅函) the mist is wet, and the dragon bears it here; on the dark blue seat a wind rises, and the elephant treads and goes.

This praises the Dharma jewel and the Sangha jewel together.

Duke Jeongsuk wrote:

The jade water clock (玉漏) that pierces the flowers drips into Caoxi (曹溪); the beaded blind that shines in the sun is Indra's net (帝網), fold on fold.

This is a matter of the palace and yet praises the Dharma jewel. Jo Munbal the lecturer said, "If 'pierces the flowers' were changed to 'the wind carries,' it would be finer still."

Choe Seok the state councillor, when he was in the Yunwon (綸院), wrote:

The bell cries and wakes far off the dream of the three worlds. The hall stands solemn and high and presses down the void of the five heavens. Though one ground the great earth and made it into ink, it would be hard to tell out the breadth of our king's will and prayer.

This poem belongs to the time when Munjong (文廟) founded Heungwangsa and opened a rite of celebration in the three-storied great hall. So there it was well enough to set out the event.

Duke Munsun wrote:

On this commanding ground the White Jade Capital is newly opened, and the royal air of river and hill wraps the Hall of Light. Leaning again on the Buddha's power, the golden walls are firm. Why fear that the iron horse of the barbarian whelps is strong?

The academician Yi wrote:

Crying huihui and chulchul, like the crying at the altar of the soil; trembling and fearful, as though treading upon ice.

Duke Munsun's was for driving off the barbarian troops on the day of the move to the new capital, and the academician Yi's was for opening the granaries in a disaster and afterward calling in the rice. So it was fitting to set out the events in this way.

Jin the rectifier of omissions wrote:

On the desk of the Seon morning the incense has heaped its ashes; at the eaves of the lecture night the moon has lost its edge.

Though the form of the words is clear and bracing, to chant the scenery is wrong.

The first couplet speaks of the spreading of the seats; the second and the third couplets both praise the three jewels; the closing line speaks of blessing and benefit. This is the model of the hymn of praise. Even a great scholar with a mighty brush is shut inside the model set before him, and does not escape changing his bones.

Yet Duke Munsun's Burning Away Disaster at a Portent of Heaven says:

The drool that runs at the barbarian's lips is sign enough already. The writing of the sky shows its reproach — what more is there to chasten? The heart of Heaven is like water and hard to fathom, but the Buddha's power is like a mountain and may be trusted and leaned on.

His Driving Off the Barbarian Troops says:

The remnant robbers have drawn up an army of famished faces for nothing; our king leans wholly on the honored one of the jade tuft (玉毫). If the chanting were made to sound like the roar of a dragon, how should the barbarian children not run off like deer?

His words are bold and free and not shut in, and so those who are tied to the common and stuck in the vulgar sometimes blame him for standing too tall.

Jo the lecturer's Tripitaka Rite says:

The golden seal goes forward and urges, and the royal person bows; the embroidered patched robes hurry to meet him, and the royal steps go round.

To speak of the king's movements is wrong. In the Zhou guan (周官) the officer of deliberations (司議) is said to "have charge of the assisting, and to announce the order of bowing and yielding," and the commentary says, "To help with the rite is called chan (贊); the assisting is the telling of the order of bowing and yielding to the king."〔Under the Later Han the supervisor of receptions called out the bowing, and also cried out and called the bows of the hundred officials, like the hal (喝) of today. Only under Wei was the office of secretary for communications first set up.〕 Now at the several rites, when the king goes in person and performs the rite of bowing, a privy councillor goes forward and assists him, and the common people call it gwonbae (勸拜). Jo used the common word.

The academician Gwon Jeok inscribed at the Jinbu post station:

The old station's name is Jinbu (珍富). What does that name Jinbu mean? The snow has piled, and the hills are full of jade. The willows brush, and the road has gold to spare. The carp of the stream leap as red brocade; the village smoke scatters as blue gauze. The two village headmen before my eyes have temples of silver thread, splendid to see.

The academician said, "I made it in play on purpose, so it comes near an actor's patter."

The academician Yi Misu, thanking the abbot of Heungcheonsa for a gift of firewood, wrote:

All my life I have not known the trick of running to the fire. How precious — our master's kindness is his folly.

These words are only an old scholar playing well in his leisure. Though men of the Tang and the Song have this manner, it is not for those coming up after to model themselves on.

The academician Yi Misu's Going by River on a Spring Day

The green peaks rise steep and gather like the edges of brushes; the blue river stretches far, and the pine haze floods it. The dark clouds, rank upon rank, make strange letters: ten thousand li of blue sky are one sheet of paper.

The meaning set out in this poem is large, but it is tied to the frame of a likeness, and the words could not go as they pleased.

Such a piece as Duke Munsun's Fierce Heat:

The golden crow spits out its flame of itself, and gasping, it can hardly fly back. From this the sun's walk grows slow, and it stays and becomes a fire that scorches men. How may I get a fan stretched across the void and shake and winnow it over all under Heaven?

It comes near a likeness, and yet the words go as they please and the meaning is large.

The academician Choe Hyojeo, matching the Cheokseojeong poem of the northern court, wrote:

The green turns at the mountain's waist: the long river is a sash. The kingfisher blue is set at the cloud's head: the far peak is an eyebrow.

A likeness of this kind is the manner of one newly come up to learning poetry.

Duke Munsun's Village at the Harbor Mouth

The lake is clear, and cunningly it prints the moon that touches its heart; the harbor is wide, and greedily it swallows the tide that enters its mouth.

To say swallow and to say mouth comes near a likeness, but it is not what the newly risen sort could draw out.

In the making of poems there is nothing better than borrowing a word for a likeness. Yet when a seasoned hand uses it the words are ripe and the meaning is skillful, and when one newly learning uses it the words are raw and the meaning is thin. Yang the drafting attendant, matching the Dongnak poem, wrote:

The mist takes for fodder the rain the hills have brewed; the wind measures out the haze the valleys have poured.

The meaning is skillful, and the words are not very raw.

Yeom Dongsu said, "There are poems that follow the meaning and are finished straight off. Such is Li Taibai's 'The willow color is tender yellow gold; the pear blossom is fragrant white snow' — lovely and fine and skillful, with hardly a place where he lingered in thought or sought in pain. Such a piece as Lord Pan's Old Mirror, 'The seal script has passed a thousand ages and is rough; the shadow pours cold over one whole hall' — that was thought out finely and weighed to the utmost, and was made with the greatest pain."

Looking at it so, those who make wakening lines in the world today have hardly escaped the sickness of pain. Yet if a poor talent tries to follow the meaning and finish straight off, his words are coarse and mixed. A quickness that is coarse and mixed is not so good as a slowness that carves well. And if carving well truly comes to weighing to the utmost, I fear we shall see the like of Cui Rong, who borrowed marrow and died.

Duke Munsun's Miscellaneous Pieces on the Northern Hills

The man of the hills does not go out of the hills, and the old path is buried in rough moss. What I fear is that a man of the red dust will cheat me of my moon in the green vines.

Put this poem into Li Bai's collection, and one would not know which was which.

Jin the rectifier of omissions heard a man reciting one line of the Seon master Mun's poem: "Cutting the plantain, the window has less rain; trimming the bamboo, the stone steps gain in autumn." He took it for a wakening line. Jin laughed and said, "This is children's talk, and an old scholar does not say such things. I once inscribed at a mountain temple, and the closing line said, 'On the green steps the fallen flowers lie an inch deep, and the east wind blows them off and blows them back again.' A line of this form is an old scholar's speech."

The Hallim academician Kim wrote:

On the north veranda my sleep is full, and the flower shade has moved; the swallows of the beam take their young away and come again.

Though it does not come up to Jin's poem, its words are splendid and tight and near to his.

When Uijong withdrew to the wild south, there was a man named Yi Gi (李琪) who was good at painting. He made a portrait but wrote no name on it, calling it An-eo (安於), and he set it in a thatched hall at the eastern capital and did reverence to it morning and evening.

Giam the retired scholar happened to see it, and thereupon made a eulogy (讚):

"To call it the likeness of an emperor — the cloth cap and the crane-feather robe are like Lü Weng's (呂翁). To call it the form of a man living hidden — the full nose and the dragon face are like Pei Gong's (沛公). To push it back up onto the vermilion court and the jade seat — the mandate does not come through again. To draw it in among the great pines and the strange rocks — the air in it is not yet spent. At first one wonders whether it is Confucius' phoenix in decline, and again one fears it may be the Li (李) that is still a dragon. If it is neither, then surely a spirit came down from Heaven to meet the few times when the Yellow River runs clear, so that the people might climb the terrace of spring and enjoy a great peace; and then the dragon went too high and regret was born, and one dream was startled awake, and it went back at last into the far darkness. Is that it?"

He once painted a portrait of Master Drunk-Asleep (醉睡先生) himself, and wrote behind it:

Having the Way and not being able to practice it, better to be drunk. Having a mouth and not being able to speak, better to sleep. The master lies drunk and asleep in the apricot-blossom shade, and there is no one in the world who knows what this means.

Now an ode (頌) praises merit and virtue and makes them fair, and the eulogy (讚) is of that kind as well. The rhapsody (賦) is rooted in poetry and branched off into the lyric (詞). To split principle finely and minutely is called a discourse (論); to open a hard matter on clear grounds is called a policy paper (策); to spread out writing to match the substance is called a stele text (碑); to set out a matter clearly and smoothly is called an inscription (銘). By a memorial (表) a man brings his sincerity through; by a petition (疏) he sets out his purpose; by a patent (冊) merit is recorded; by a dirge (誄) the end is made fair; the admonition (箴) patches what is lacking; the proclamation (檄) carries a warning abroad. Each of these writings has its own body, and the writing of a eulogy asks only that it be outstanding and soaring, and is not tied to one form. Giam alone had the gift of it.

The retired scholar was skilled at calligraphy and painting as well, and whenever he struck off bamboo he made a poem and wrote it behind. He once passed the house of Yi Sejang the vice director, where there were several clumps of tall bamboo whose new shoots came out past the rail. The duke brought out a screen and asked him to paint it, and he painted only a few shoot tips, and inscribed:

Below the tower the bamboo grove is a hundred feet tall, but the tower is high, and only a few shoot tips are seen. If you would see the thousand stalks of jade that pull up out of the ground, you must tread the tiered stair and go down from this tower.

Yi Yuji of the Munwon praised it in a poem:

The true form of this gentleman (此君) is hard to paint well: glue and powder are barely laid on, and the air is gone already. The traces of the retired scholar's hand are clear as the moon; as if by magic he moved the thin shadows onto the screen.

An's boldness and Yi's clearness were both on the lips of men.

Kim Gaein was a man of Georyeong-hyeon. He kept a dog and was very fond of it. One day he went out, and the dog followed him. Gaein grew drunk and lay down by the road and fell asleep, and a fire in the fields was about to reach him. Then the dog wet its body in the stream nearby, and went back and forth and round about, wetting the grass that lay close by so that the path of the fire was cut off; and when its strength was spent it died there.

When Gaein woke and saw the traces of the dog he was moved to grief, and he made a song and set down his sorrow, and raised a mound and buried it, and planted his staff to mark the place. The staff grew into a tree, and so the place was named Osu (獒樹). Among the music scores the Gyeonbun gok (犬墳曲) is this.

Afterward someone made a poem:

A man is ashamed to be called a beast, and openly turns his back on a great kindness. If his master is in peril and he does not give his life, how is he fit to be spoken of with a dog?

The Duke of Jinyang ordered his retainers to make a record of it and send it round the world, meaning to let those in the world who have received kindness know that there is a way of repaying it.

The capped men and the boys of the Twelve Schools (十二徒) gather in the hills and woods every summer to practice their studies and break up when autumn comes, and they mostly lodged at the two temples Yongheungsa and Gwibeopsa.

One evening the moon was bright in the autumn sky, and a bracing air came over the men. Ham Sun the judicial officer, Yi Damji the graduate-elect and Ok Hwau the graduate-elect brought six or seven boys and capped men, gathered at the stone bridge of Gwibeopsa, opened a small drinking party, and made poems on the rhymes of a man of an earlier age.

Yi wrote:

The summer heat the wind has swept away; the mood of autumn the moon has brought in its mouth.

Ham and Ok were both startled and gave way of themselves. Those who heard of it laughed and said, "This is a line of Master Im Chun's. Whether Drunken Yi stole it in secret or hit on it by chance one cannot tell; but how did Poison Ok not know it and give way of himself?"〔Yi drank hard and did not hold himself in check, and Ok was stiff and crossed other men, so that at the time they were called Drunken Yi (醉李) and Poison Ok (毒玉).〕

Baek Deukju the head of the list became secretary at Wansan, and the commissioner, on his way up to the palace, left a quatrain behind. Baek matched it at once:

Since the envoy of the stars went to court at Heaven, the willow camp is spring of itself for nothing. Even the green grass, that has no feeling, grieves. How much more a man who has feeling.

The commissioner came down from his seat, took his hand and thanked him.

When he had left office and was cast into idleness, the Duke of Jingang heard of his talent and called him in and had him write on a round fan. Baek's hand was neat and fair, and he plied the brush as fast as lightning. He took the fan and wrote where he stood:

The rivers and hills were not the treasure of Wei; it leaned on Lord Xinling alone. Because he did the rite to the old man of Yimen (夷門), he was able to lead a hundred thousand troops.

The duke looked round at those beside him and said, "Truly he runs his brush."

When the academician Yi Misu went as envoy to the Jurchen Jin, he followed the rhymes of Thoughts on the Past at Yuyang (漁陽懷古) and wrote:

The hibiscus shines low upon the green mountain peak, and the morning wine is just at its height on that white jade face. The Nishang (霓裳) dance was over and the pleasure was not yet enough, when in one morning the thunder and rain sent the Pig Dragon (猪龍).

Later Yi Baekjeon the director of studies went into the Jurchen Jin as recording secretary, and coming to this place he matched it:

Once I climbed the peak behind Emaosi (鵝毛寺): An Lushan drilled his troops here long ago. It was only that he wished to snatch the chicken-head flesh (鷄頭肉). How should he have striven to be a dragon changed into the moon?

And again:

They feasted on Yuruifeng at Lishan. How should the lotus be like a face flushed with wine? Little did they know there would now be an envoy on the bright camel (明駝), sending an auspicious dragon a thousand li with earnest care.

When Misu uses an allusion his words are always clear and new. Yet in the matter of the hibiscus the words are new but the meaning is not close, while the two rhyme words he followed, bong (峰) and yong (龍), are very fine.

Jin Hwa of the Okdang and Yi Yunbo of Bongsan were on night duty together in the Forbidden Grove. At that time a certain recording secretary who had gone into the Jurchen Jin before said, "Beside the road in the one district of Guangning there is Shisanshan (十三山), and the travelers who come and go have inscribed and chanted a great deal there, but it is all shallow and near at hand and does not break through to the point. I beg you two gentlemen to make a poem on it."

Jin drew his brush at once and wrote:

Of the twelve of Wushan (巫山) I have only heard the name. On the post road I steal a little leisure, and my noonday pillow is cool. One peak of bones left over troubles the cloud and the rain, and the man beside me must be laughing that my dreaming soul is long.

Yi wrote:

Six or seven hills have drawn out hairpins of green jade, and the fresh green of their fair air strikes the morning trace horse.〔It looks out on the road where envoys and guests come and go.〕 From now on the fair name of Songyue (嵩嶽) will be less, and men will count only the strange peaks, three and twenty.

And again:

In my young days I loved to climb hills in waxed clogs, and I trod all the ground between Heng and Wu and Dai and Hua. Wulao and Bagong I had not finished wandering, and I did not know that this was hidden here and grudged to me.

Jin's poem went by the meaning and Yi's poem by the words, and the words of the two pieces are not so good as the meaning of the one.

Choe Injeon the section officer, when he was doctor of the national academy (國博), matched a poem given him by a cousin of the same surname and wrote:

Before and after, three chancellors who were heads of the list (龍頭); in a row together, four merit subjects of the Ingak (麟閣). The flourishing of one house tips over a thousand ages. What man is there to follow after in their dust?

This says that Duke Munheon, as a head of the list, became a merit subject enshrined with Jeongjong (靖廟); that his son Duke Munhwa was likewise a head of the list and was enshrined with Munjong; that his grandson Sachu the secretariat director was enshrined with Sukjong; that his great-great-grandson Yunui the state councillor was enshrined with Uijong; and that his descendant Hongyun the state councillor was also a guest who had climbed the dragon gate. Besides these, more than ten who were not heads of the list rose to the seat of chancellor. Injeon too is a grandson of Duke Munheon.

The court historian Yi Yunbo, on night duty with Jin Hwa of the Okdang, made Roaming in the Palace of the Moon and wrote:

The moon drives the long wind and turns through the empty blue; it has dug out crystal and made the tracks of its flying wheels. The Guanghan Palace is round for a thousand li, and the jade maidens ride phoenixes and stand in rank below the court. The sky is high, and in the immortals' music pipe and flute choke; the wind stirs, and on the Nishang (霓裳) robes the rings and jades sound. For how many autumns has the white hare pounded the drug? The drug is made, and Chang'e has not stolen it. They blend the night dew (沆瀣) evenly and offer it to the immortals; they chew it down, and the throat of Heaven is like ice and snow. The immortals live above the sky and gain long life, and they spray it toward the world of men and take away the fierce heat. Marvelous hands trim the eighty thousand branches of the palace, and jade axes stand ranged thick and guard the bolts. Strolling, each has his fill of roaming in the blue void, and they eat their fill of the white jade dust from the gourd of Heaven. I envy that Luo Gongyuan, who by the silver bridge groped past Shen (參星) and climbed over the tongue of the Northern Dipper. The River of Heaven comes down and slaps the Herdboy's shoulder, and treading and scooping he picks the jade blossoms (瓊華) with his own hand. The clear capital may be looked at but cannot be climbed to, and night after night I turn my head, and my heart breaks.

The gentlemen of the offices held Jin's poem the better for being clear and stout, and Yi's poem the worse: though its words were clear and cold, it was trifling. Jin's poem is lost.

Unji is a monk, and no one knows where he was from. As he was about to go back to Jiangnam he begged a poem from Yi Yuji, and he called on all the offices and the Hallim and sought matching poems very diligently. The gentlemen of Bongnae and Yeongju each matched one piece and gave it to him.

The court historian Yi Yunbo followed the rhymes and wrote:

Where has one patch of floating cloud its house? It enters the valley with no mind, and suddenly comes out again. At morning it follows Dahua and passes Xuanqiu (軒丘); at evening it turns toward Kuaiji and goes back to its feathered cave. Following the wind ten thousand li, it tosses without a bound, and making no great rain it fades away again. A master of cloud, a nature of cloud, a body of cloud as well, he is sick of the capital and would go off to Yue. Though I have not known the roaming of Jiangnam, the fine places of Jiangnam I can tell of even from afar. The bamboo draws out green jade and holds the color of spring; the orange presses down yellow gold and crosses the winter moon. I beg you, master, roam and seek your fill while you are young and strong; when a man grows old and big he can only be at ease in one room. He came with a fine line in his hand and showed it to me, and I shake the dust from my brush and carry it on, one by one. Is there a mouth at the brush tip, or is there not? The Buddha is the mind, and the mind is the Buddha.

The academician Yi Misu saw them, and it is said he set Yi's poem first.

An elder of Jogye came and asked, "How does the poetic form of Yi Yang the rectifier of omissions compare with the Seon master Mun's?" The answer was, "They are above and below each other."

He said, "Yi the rectifier of omissions' poem says, 'The dawn bell sounds out of the valley gate and is cold.' The Seon master Mun says, 'The chime sounds clear and crosses the moonlit peak.' Yi the state councillor says, 'The chime sound breaks off clear, and the stone gate is cold.' Which is the better?"

The answer was, "All of them have got one marrow of the clear and the cold. Yet the rectifier of omissions may still be judged on the same day with the state councillor."

He said, "Do you mean that his poems are shallow and easy?" The answer was, "Only common words and clumsy lines may be called shallow and easy, and this is not a case for it."

The elder said, "The rectifier of omissions' collection already goes about in the world. Who is there whose writing is better than the rectifier of omissions' and whose family collection does not yet go about?"

The answer was, "The noted worthies of middle antiquity and before cannot be counted. In the present age Master O and his brother, the retired scholar An, Jin the rectifier of omissions, Yu and Kim and the two Yis, and a great many more, are as far from the rectifier of omissions as heaven from earth. In their time there was no one who knew them and gathered their work up, and their remaining drafts are all scattered and lost." The elder was still not satisfied.

When Yi Sunmok the drafting attendant was on night duty at the Okdang, he met the gentlemen of the Hallim at the Ungak. When the wine was at its height they asked him to run his brush, and he drew the word rin (鱗) and wrote at once on a plain screen:

The shadows of the waves on Bongji (鳳池) are green and scaled. On the pine slope of a thousand years, how many springs have there been? For thirty years the jade carriage has not made its round. Beyond the flowers, the hazy moon — to whom does it belong?

The whole company did not understand its meaning, and when the wine wore off Yi himself did not know the meaning he had drawn out. Six years later the capital was moved to Hwasan, and this poem was borne out. Surely a holy thing borrowed his hand and made it so. Only the meaning of the thirty years is not understood, and one must wait for a later day.

Yi Damji the section officer, in a poem he sent up to Mun the chancellor, wrote:

Under the moon the worthy peach blossom is fair; before the wind the holy apricot blossom is new. Only the damson of the icy valley is left, withered and never meeting the spring.

Duke Jeongsuk's childhood name had the word song (松) in it, and the childhood name of Kim Taesin the graduate was juk (竹). When the duke entered the chancellery, Taesin sent up a poem and wrote:

I hear that the Eighteen Gentlemen (十八公 — the pine) in the hills have lately received the rank of great officer. The only one who knows this gentleman (此君 — the bamboo) is you. In return, commend me earnestly to the Ancestral Dragon (祖龍).

Yu Bo, a recent graduate, sent up to Bak Hwon the secretariat drafter:

Under the crape myrtle the immortal brush let fall its dew and made ten thousand trees of red in the world of men. Only the one strand of willow at the east gate passes the good spring wind in vain, year after year.

In old times and now there have been many poems that liken a thing by the letters of a surname or a name. Though this is a form opened out already, when one first sees it there seems to be a newly framed meaning in it. Taesin's speaking of the Ancestral Dragon was not fit to be set out there.

When Jin the rectifier of omissions first kept night duty at the Okdang, Son Deukji the Hallim academician, Yi Yunbo the court historian, Yi Baeksun of the Dongmun, Yun Uil the former Hallim academician, and the talented men of the six boards (六官) were all at the seats. They drew rhymes and had a fan chanted, and Jin drew out his brush at once and wrote:

To raise a wind they make a fan of rhinoceros horn and maple, and it turns to ice of itself and cools a sky of fiery cloud. The heat draws back, and the flies can hardly come near; autumn returns, and even the wild geese do not go before it. A small lotus turns over on the palm; a round moon falls before the collar. In its elegance it suits the general who directs his troops, and long ago it followed the immortal who painted water. The new silk is as though cut out of snow; the old handle still holds smoke in it. The painting has darkened, and the colored women are left; the favor is thin, and it grudges the cool cicada. Holding it and enjoying it, I come to the cold mat: this is the million cash of Yangzhou.

The whole company held Jin's poem not fine, and so they agreed among themselves that each should chant one out of his own mouth, and that they should polish one another and set the ranks.

Son the Hallim academician:

Carrying it about, how should one rest even a moment? Going out and coming in, it is always first. Set up as a screen, it is beyond the singing lips; tossed aside, it is before the drunken knee. The sweat is green, and the wheel borrows the moon; the foam is green, and the shape is a true immortal.

The whole company teased him wittily and said, "The couplet of carrying it about is ordinary and ripe; the sweat is green and the foam is green are out of the way, but raw."

Yi of the Dongmun wrote:

Its rank grew heavy through Feiyan (飛燕); its painting came first from Jilong (季龍). The embroidered curtain shakes, and the waves turn over; the jade kitchen is beaten, and the smoke flies up. It shakes out cold, and the heat-struck rat wakes; it flings coolness, and the clean cicada has its fill.

Yun wrote:

The roundness of the moon is now as it was of old; the parallels of a poem have the second follow the first. Fluttering and brushing, the body has no stain; in the chill, the mind would become an immortal. The painting should be looked back at and leave its marvel; the writing does not ask for Zhang's madness.

The company said, "The lines it shakes out cold and it flings coolness are clear and new in word and in meaning, and Yun's three couplets are round and ripe and have force."

Yi of the palace library wrote:

A green moon above the seat of talk; a clear wind before the pillow of filial love. The red kitchen hurries the dragon's fire; the green tower uses the musk smoke. The flies on the tray scatter after the shadow; the shimmering haze touches the wind and goes mad. A painting had best set reeds and ducks in it; words had best decline the willow and the cicada.

Han of the academy wrote:

The butterflies dance beyond the slanting glow; the fish leap before the fine waves. The place is the Cheongseo Hall (淸暑殿) after all; the man is the immortal of the Guanghan Palace. At evening the moths screen the orchid flame; at morning the wind guards the smoke of the sweet herb.

The company said, "In Yi's poem, how are reeds and ducks fit to be painted on a small fan? Three of his couplets all use insects and birds, and only the couplet of the green moon has a clear and better line form. Han chanted butterflies and fish and the moon, and tipped the fan over and lost the real thing; and his couplet of the Cheongseo Hall raises person and place straight out, so that the telling of the matter is thin and far off."

Yi of the Donggwan wrote:

The wind rises in the land of the silk histories (紬史); the moon stirs in the sky where the cords are spread (演綸). Its making is below Fuxi and Xuanyuan; its heat and its cool go before the Image of the Lord (象帝). Its faith is thin behind the pine and the cypress; its merit is small before the chaff and the bran. It puts aside the carrying of a long whisk lightly, and is cooler than playing at being half an immortal. Cutting the plantain, one wonders if it is the rain of phoenixes; swinging the feather, it sweeps away the wolf smoke. Breaking the heat, the skin is as if washed; flinging coolness, the hand is as if mad. Winnowing at the waist, it shakes and wears a phoenix; brushing the head, it tilts the cicada cap. I would borrow its truly clear power and drive away the vulgar-smelling coin.

The company said, "The first three couplets are the more marvelous," and they set this poem first. Yun said, "The meaning of this poem is deep at the start and shallow after, and that is an upside-down form."

At that time Duke Munsun was a Hallim academician. He came last of all and ran his brush:

I would wash away the troublesome heat, and I throw it quietly into the sky inside the well. I catch it and bring it back with both hands behind me, and shake it in before the six boards. It has come near below the high kitchen, and may be ranged before the Han regalia. The moon is round: it is the concubine who fled beneath it. The wind is weak: there is no immortal to drive it. The flying-white (飛白) writing winds the mist about; the empty-green (空靑) painting dots the smoke. It drives the mosquitoes, and the thunder is quiet already; it strikes the butterflies, and the snow is about to go mad. Flapping and flapping, a crane that offers its head; lightly and lightly, a cicada that plays at the temples. Bongnae and Yeongju have vied in chanting. Who shall be called the green coin (靑錢) above all?

The whole company sighed and agreed, and there was no more talk of ranking. Duke Munsun said, "The three couplets of the academician of the Donggwan, 'the wind rises,' 'its making,' and 'its faith is thin,' are truly poems of old Du (老杜). My poem falls far short of them." The court historian said, "Your likening of the well and the fan is the more marvelous, and your drawing in the high kitchen and the Han regalia to speak of a fan of the palace is marvelous again. How could my poem stand against it?"

The academician Yi Misu said, "I shut my gate and read the two collections of Huang (黃) and Su (蘇), and only then did my words grow strong and my rhythms ring, and I got the samadhi of making poems."

Duke Munsun said, "I did not take over the words of the ancients; I made new meanings of my own."

The men of that time heard this and thought, "The two lords went in by different ways." It is not so. Their inner rooms are different, but the way in was one gate for both.

How is that? When a student reads the classics and the histories and the hundred schools, it is not that he stops at getting the meaning and handing on the Way. He means to practice their language and to take after their body, to make it heavy in his heart and ripe in his work. Then, when he comes to chant and to compose, heart and mouth answer each other, and he opens his mouth and it is a finished piece. So nothing he sets down has a raw and rough word in it. What is not taken over from the ancients, but comes out new and wakening of itself, is only the framing of the meaning and the laying out of the writing. When the two lords said that they were unlike, that is likely all it was.

Poems and prose take the air for their master. The air blossoms out of the nature; the meaning leans on the air; the words come out of the feelings, and the feelings are the meaning. Yet with a new and strange meaning it is harder still to set the words, and they turn raw and rough at every turn. Even a man like Duke Munsun looked through the classics and the histories and the hundred schools, and was smoked with their fragrance and dyed with their colors, so that his words are rich and fair of themselves. Even where a new meaning was subtle in the extreme and hard to give a shape to, he told it out without remainder, and all of it is fine and ripe.

He once chanted Minghuang (明皇) and Niannu (念奴):

The emperor's mind was turned wholly upon Yuhuan (玉環), and yet he knew the fair face of Niannu. Had he made his love even and shared out the blame of others, by what name would the old barbarian have dared to raise his revolt?

Even if an ancient had happily hit upon this new meaning, his setting of the words would surely not have come to such skill as this.

When talent wins over feeling, then even with no fine meaning the words are still round and ripe. When feeling wins over talent, the words are mean and limp, and one does not know that there is any fine meaning in them. Only when feeling and talent are both got is there anything worth looking at in a man's poems.

Duke Munan said, "Master O Sejae's talent and understanding were beyond compare. He once got the Leipian (類篇) and looked it through and said, 'For learning there is nothing more urgent than this,' and then he copied it out with his own hand to the end."

Anyone who composes should first look into the ground of his letters, and gather and weigh them against what the classics and the histories and the hundred schools have used. Then, when he answers the brush and puts them to work, his words will be fine and strong at once, and he will be able to bring out skillful words that are hard to come by. If his words are not fine and strong, then however soaring his feeling and however bold his air, there is nowhere for it to be spread and raised, and in the end his poems and his prose are clumsy and rough.

The court historian Yi Yunbo was fine and broad in learning, and his poems and his prose all had root and stem. He once laughed at the way those learning after him put letters to work and strung words together, and said, "Only when the habits of the examination hall have been washed away entirely can a man be taught to write."

Those who come after now are far below the men of that time. As a rule they make no business of reading, and strive only to get on quickly. They practice the easy writing of the examinations, and if they are lucky enough to pass, they still cannot press on and add to their studies. They only pull out a blue and pair it with a white, set up one and match it with two, carve the raw and cut the cold, and take that for skill.

So when the poems and prose of men before them are elegant and correct, spare and antique, they say they are plain and hard to copy; when they are grand and deep, strange and steep, they say they are crooked and hard to know; when they are large and ample, mild and generous, they say they are loose and wide and not skillful. They put no thought into it at all.

Look at the poems and prose of men today, and there are pieces that gather up the words and meanings already opened out in old times and now and frame the language over again, and they come out raw and weak and mean and common; yet all are called clear and fair, or called wakening and hard-won. They do not know at all that when a man sees a poem or a piece of prose that stands out and does not come into his feeling, he should take it for a place he has not yet reached, and go over it again and again and look at it closely, and stop only when its savor has been got.

Alas, the writing of that time has greatly changed and come to the vulgar, and the vulgar has changed once more and come to the play of actors, and I do not know what its end will be.

The world of late honors Dongpo, and that is because his air and ring are bold and soaring, his meaning deep and his words ample, and his use of allusion wide and great, so that men hope to copy him and get his body. But those coming up now read the Dongpo jip, not to copy him and get his bone and sinew, but only to make it their evidence and a tool for using allusions. That is stealing, and there is nothing in it to draw out. How much less will they dare to learn Du Fu and get even his ripples?

Duke Munan always said, "When a man composes for the court and draws on old matters, in prose he uses the Six Classics and the Three Histories (三史), and in poems the Wen xuan and Li Bai and Du Fu and Han Yu and Liu Zongyuan. Beyond these, the collections of the several houses are not fit to be drawn on for authority."

He also said, "Words that are marvelous in the extreme give up their savor only after a long while; mean and shallow pieces please at first sight. When a student looks at a book he should read it until it is ripe and think on it deeply, and set himself to reach the getting of its meaning."

Duke Munsun said, "In days past, when I first saw Lord Ouyang's collection, I loved its richness. At the second reading I got its fine places, and at the third I clasped my hands and sighed and gave in. I also saw Mei Shengyu's collection, and in my heart I quietly made light of it, and did not understand why in old times and now men have called him the old man of poetry (詩翁). Now that I see it, the outside seems faded and weak, but it holds bone within: it is truly the fine and outstanding thing among poems. Only when a man knows Mei's poems can he be said to know poetry."

He also said, "As I grow old I taste more and more closely the meanings of the ancients' judgments on poems, and there is nothing in them that my heart does not get. Only with Lord Xie's 'By the pond bank the spring grass comes up' do I not see the fine place."

Even the duke said such a thing. Who then is the man that knows?

Now there are those who argue by guess and say, "The words of this line come out just as Heaven made them, and they make the mood of spring blossom. The thought of the new green just sprouting is plain within those five letters." Others say, "The light of spring floods warm, and things are lush and shining, and mild and ample words flow out of themselves: that is what is to be taken here." How should this meaning be the place the duke did not see? There must be a meaning and an air in it that cannot be matched. If not, then those who speak of it have gone too far.

The poem Seeing the Spring Away that Yi Misu made in his young days, and his poem and his record of the Goseok Byeongnajeong, were all on the lips of men, and by them he got the name of one who walks alone. When he became a Hallim academician and looked at what he had made before, he thought it very mean, and whenever anyone spoke of it he was at once ashamed. He burned it all, and did not gather it into his family collection.

Duke Munsun always said to people, "What I have made all my life goes forward with the years. What I made last year I look at this year and find laughable. It is like this year after year."

When the duke was young he ran his brush and wrote where he stood, and framed hardly any thought. If any of his words came near the manner of the time, men all copied them out and chanted them. But when he was old and honored, and chanted at his leisure, telling his lines out slowly and thinking deep and making his words, few students take pleasure in the savor of those pieces. So the hardness of knowing poetry is hard and hard again.

From my young days, when I went in to serve at the Chunbang (春坊), down to this day, there has been no year in which I had no charge of office, and I had no leisure to make a business of reading. With nothing but a skin-deep learning I fumbled into an empty place and rose in office as far as academician. When I take up the brush my face sweats. How should I know the better and the worse in writing, and play so rashly with brush and tongue? Only, I was able to see men who were old and accomplished and to hear what was left of their talk, and so I have roughly set down what I heard and hand it on to those who come after.