Chancellor Choe Had Jeong Hongjin (鴻進), Vice Director, Paint Ink Bamboo, and Asked Me to Compose Two Encomia to Be Written on the Left and the Right of the Screen崔相國使丁郞中鴻進畫墨竹。請予作贊二首書屛之左右。

In drawing the bearing of a thing, what is prized is the likeness to its truth; fall short and it does not reach, run over and the excess is distasteful. The lord keeps a bamboo painted in ink, and so perfectly do they resemble each other that neither hand touching it nor eye resting on it can tell the true from the false. One stalk rises straight, and though it is high it does not strive meanly; a few clumps lean to the side, and though they are low they do not become lowly. Call it a painting, and there is no trace of the brush at all; one suspects it has pierced a mirror, so that it is a shadow and not a painting. Call it a shadow, and this is a screen and not a mirror — how then did he reach through to the Maker and make sport of transformation? The lord has got your constancy, and the lord's virtue is deep; he entrusted the true form to Mr. Jeong and turned the encomium over to me. Worth has truly no match for it, and only bamboo resembles it. Only the worthy know the worthy, and the lord alone has lodged his meaning here. Why did he not plant it, but lodge it in the play of ink? If it is as the real bamboo is, then this is that. The labour of heaping earth and tending — how should it equal what is gained sitting still? The form is only this, but where does the sound come from? At one look it is cool and clear, and the wind is already sighing. Listen to it slowly with the mind; it need not be done with the ears. If you ask who said this, say it was a gentleman who has emptied his heart. Had it not been for Mr. Jeong's hand, the bamboo would not have come to this; and had it not been for the lord's eye, the painting too would have lain buried. The bamboo is made manifest by the hand, and the painting is made precious by the eye. With skill he sought out skill, and exactly they met each other.