A Note Sent to the Vice Director Yu Seungdan (兪升旦)與兪侍郞升旦手簡
月日。某頓首。予自弱齡嗜作詩。想平生所著無慮八千餘首。乃緣人取去不還。或焚棄或見失。掃箱篋無遺矣。由是無意於成編。近者愚息涵。不知乃翁無似。自謂有子而業文。不集父詩。大類無情者。於是窮搜貪索。或得於予所交遊儒家釋院。或得於新學兒曹所蓄者。凡集一千餘首。猶未分卷。但以一二三秩標之。予不能止之。任其所爲。僕嘗以爲言人詩病者。曠劫之父母。以是先以一二秩奉閣下。求有以潤色之。伏惟學士小加雌黃。則亦父母不貲之恩也。惶恐不宣。奎報再拜謹啓。
On a certain day of a certain month, So-and-so bows his head to the ground.
From my young years I have delighted in making poems, and I think that what I have made in my life comes, at a rough reckoning, to more than eight thousand pieces. But others carried them off and did not return them, or they were burned, or they were lost, so that when I sweep out my box there is nothing left. For this reason I had no mind to make a book of them.
Of late my foolish son Ham (涵), not knowing how poor a thing his father is, said to himself: 「For one who is a son and studies letters not to gather his father's poems would be much the same as being a man without feeling.」 So he searched to the end and hunted greedily, getting some from the houses and monasteries of the scholars I used to keep company with and some from what boys newly at their studies had kept, and gathered in all a little more than a thousand pieces. He has not yet divided them into volumes, but has only marked them as the first, second and third bundle (秩). I could not stop him, and left him to do as he would.
I have long held that one who tells a man the ailments of his poems is like a parent from a distant aeon (劫). For this reason I first submit the first and second bundles to Your Excellency and ask that you trim them. I prostrate myself and beg that if the Academician will lay his brush to them a little and correct them, it will likewise be the immeasurable kindness of a parent. I am afraid. Here I break off. Gyubo bows twice and respectfully states.