Jiao Rite Petition at the Polo Ground in Seogyeong, Praying That Portents in the Heavens Be Turned Away — Third Cup, Blue Text (靑詞)西京行天變祈禳毬庭醮禮文 三獻靑詞
政失此變見彼。其若影形。天雖高聽必卑。可交恍惚。伏念臣忝克艱之位。臨可畏之民。雖摩撫有加而如視孩兒。若酸鹹失適而難調衆口。故屢有輿言之聒聒。亦豈無人怨之嗷嗷。否德所招。咎徵頻作。候星官之行則多越於常度。觀歲位之居則適臨於忌方。莫知漸兆之幾微。庶賴杳冥之保衛。伻投翼邑。仰屈羽車。覬垂歆格之私。遄降綏將之福。兵戈自寢。無火焚不戢之憂。社稷彌長。保山固難移之祚。胡虜莫窺於國尾。中外得息於民肩。
When government goes wrong here, a portent appears there, as shadow to form; and though heaven is high, its hearing is surely low, so that one may commune with it even in the midst of what is dim and dazzling.
Prostrate, I consider that I, your servant, have presumptuously taken a seat of the utmost difficulty and come to preside over a people who are to be feared. Though I have added my soothing care and looked on them as on little children, it is as though sour and salt had lost their measure, and the tastes of the multitude are hard to make even. Therefore the talk of many is often noisy; and how then should the people's resentment not be loud?
This is what my poor virtue has called forth: signs of fault arise often. Looking into the courses of the constellations, in many things they overstep their fixed degrees; and looking at the station of Jupiter, it has just come to a quarter that is shunned. Not knowing the first hint of how the sign will spread, I would lean upon the keeping that comes from what is hidden and far.
I send men to go to the other capital and look up to ask that you bend your feathered chariot hither. Let fall the grace of your coming to partake, and send down swiftly the blessing of your peaceful help.
Let weapons cease of themselves, so that there is no care of a fire blazing up beyond putting out; let the ancestral shrine and the altars of the state grow longer still, keeping a blessing firm as a mountain and hard to shift; and let the barbarians not spy upon the tail of the realm (國尾), so that within and without the people's shoulders may rest.
Interlinear notes 2
國語云。邊城謂之國尾。
The Discourses of the States (國語) says that a fortress on the frontier is called the tail of the realm (國尾).
歲位 — read as the station of the Year Star (歲星, Jupiter). Since 忌方 is a set term for the quarter of the Great Year (太歲), there is also a way of reading it as the station of the Great Year. — Translator