Written at the Country House of Jin, the Promising Scholar題晉秀才別墅

Mount Yong lies athwart the western corner of the walls, and one peak that has come running up stands green and sheer. Below it is the recluse's house of a few bays, and like a spirit gyuryong dragon raising its head it hangs its eaves on the hill's waist. In the height of summer every man hates the steaming heat, but here alone it is cool enough to take up in one's hand. Do not laugh that Marquis Beon (樊侯) is greedy of planting trees: the catalpas and lacquer trees that fill his garden he will cut and use before long. Plowing in spring and sowing in autumn, his greens are plentiful, and in three years the alders give firewood enough as well. The narrow path before his gate is crooked as a coiled snake, and the rocks above the terrace are jagged, like a savage leopard crouching. Not going out among men, he is of himself deep and apart, and in nourishing his nature he may well learn the hiding of the six tortoises. When the red sun shines like a candle on the paper window white as snow, it is fit for the reading of ten thousand volumes in jade-colored covers. White-faced students gather like a shoal of fish, and spreading out the classics they beat upon the box — here is a schoolroom. Only it is a regret that in the garden there is no water to wash jade in, so that it is not fit for the bathing of men and boys in the late spring. How should one learn the making of a river by drawing on the ground? How should one know who it is that pierces a mountain and brings out a spring? How might one get a high ladder of ten thousand fathoms and draw the sky's own River of Stars straight down and lead it here in a line?