A Record of the Saga Studio (四可齋)四可齋記
昔予先君。嘗置別業於西郭之外。溪谷窅深。境幽地僻。如造別一世界。可樂也。予得而有之。屢相往來。爲讀書閑適之所。有田可以耕而食。有桑可以蠶而衣。有泉可飮。有木可薪。可吾意者有四。故名其齋曰四可。且祿豐官重。乘威挾勢者。凡所欲得無一不可於意者。若予則旣窮且困。顧平生百無一可。而今遽有四可。何僭如之。夫大牢之享。始於藜羹。千里之行。起於門前。蓋其漸也。予居是齋也。若有得田園之樂。則其唾棄世網。拂衣褁足。歸老故園。作大平農叟。擊壤鼓腹。歌詠聖化。以被于管絃。亦何有不可哉。嘗於是齋。著詩三首。詩集中有西郊草堂詩是已。其一句云。快哉農家樂。歸田從此始。是眞予志也。某月日。白雲居士。記。
In former days my late father kept a country house outside the western wall. Its stream and valley are deep and far off, its bounds secluded and its ground remote, so that it seems to make a separate world of its own, and it is a place to delight in. I got it for my own and went to and fro there often, and made it my place for reading and for passing time at leisure.
There is a field, and it may be plowed and eaten from; there are mulberries, and silkworms may be reared and clothing had; there is a spring, and it may be drunk; there are trees, and they may be taken for firewood. There are four things here that suit my purpose, and so I named the house 「Saga (四可)」, the Four That May Be.
And for one whose emolument is ample and whose office is weighty, who rides upon his dignity and has power at his side, there is not one thing of all he wishes to get that does not suit his purpose. One like me, already poor and moreover hard pressed, looks back upon his whole life and finds not one thing in a hundred that suits him; and now all at once there are four that suit, so that nothing could be more presumptuous than this.
Now the feast of the great victim (大牢) also begins with a soup of pigweed, and a road of a thousand li rises before one's own gate: such, in the main, is the way of going by degrees. If, dwelling in this house, I should come to have the joy of field and garden, then to spit away the net of the world, shake out my robe, wrap up my feet and go home to my native place, and there, growing old, become a farmer of a time of peace, beating the ground and drumming the belly and singing the teaching of the sages and setting it to strings and pipes — what should there be in that which could not be?
I once made three poems in this house, and these are the 「Poems of the Thatched Hall in the Western Suburb」 (西郊草堂詩) among my poems. One line of them says: 「How refreshing, the joy of the farmer's house; my going back to the fields begins from here.」 And this is truly my purpose. Written on a certain day of a certain month by the White Cloud Hermit.