Memorial of Privy Councillor Yu Gonggwon (柳公權) begging to retire from office柳樞密公權乞辭職表

I, your servant so-and-so, report. Since your servant has long been ill and cannot hasten to his duties and discharge his public office, I beg that my office be released. My merit is not great while the reward is generous, and it is hard to stay long. Heaven is high, yet it hears what is below, and will surely grant what I ask. I dare to open my fearful collar and look up and trespass upon your stern majesty.

Prostrate, I consider that your servant is of a lineage commonplace and slight, and crooked in talent and endowment. Going early upon the course of office, I was fortunate to bathe in fragrance and dust off my cap; yet I kept to my own plainness and dullness and never attached myself to what was hot to warm my hands. Presumptuously receiving Your Majesty's regard, you remembered this paltry servant beyond measure, raised him to a post like the throat and the tongue, and kept him always beside the imperial crown. Filling a vacancy in the Palace Library I presumptuously enjoyed early the glory of a scholar, and to have made up the number in the bureau charged with selecting officials was a thing beyond my life's hope. I merely consumed my salary and added not a mote of benefit.

Presently I was moved to the Privy Council and also held jointly the authority of a splendid department. The thread of Your Majesty's turning to ask counsel, and the close-woven frame of army and state, are things that even a nimble hand and a keen blade might fear they could not hold up under; how then should a thin strength and a shallow talent be able to bear them and answer to them? Always fearing that I should become as a small flask that easily overflows, I looked at still water and warned myself. Having the seven things Sukya (叔夜) could not endure, I yet forced myself and worked; bearing the two things for which Gong Gyu (孔戣) ought to have departed, I yet got by at my public duties.

Good fortune in excess bred calamity, and care in depth bred illness. My hands and feet are sluggish and stiff and not easy to use, and my body has slackened almost to the point of falling. How should this be the fault of cold and heat going amiss? Nor is it the fault of mist and dew. It has come about, in sum, because the talent was small and the charge heavy, the virtue thin and the office high. Long have I stolen my seat, and long have I blocked the worthy. The excessive good fortune of several years has brought on the troublesome illness of today.

My awakening is already late, but how should my withdrawal be late? Rather than leave the office empty and call down reproof, and heavily disgrace Your Majesty's recognition of me, it is better to reckon my station and draw back my person and live out my days somehow in this holy age. My private feeling is of itself urgent, and my narrow intent is hard to shift.

Prostrate I hope that Your Sage Majesty will extend the heart by which a parent loves and pities, and broaden the magnanimity by which heaven and earth enfold, and consider that your servant is not at ease in a high seat, and weigh that your servant's words come truly from his utmost sincerity. Especially send down the word of your consent and make whole my remaining breath. If you do so, then my years will be lengthened a little and I shall see again the great teaching flowing in abundance; and though I be barred far from where Your Majesty dwells, how should my loyalty cease even for a moment? Your servant cannot contain, and so forth.