Preface — Choe Chiwon sends up his book序

The envoy going from Huainan into his own country and bearing the edict and the rest, formerly inspecting officer of the commander in chief, gentleman for court service, attendant censor, attendant in the inner palace, granted the purple robe and the golden fish pouch, your servant Choe Chiwon, sends up the miscellaneous poems and rhapsodies he has written and the collection of his memorials and reports, twenty eight volumes, and sets them down in full as follows.

Modern style rhapsodies from the private examinations, five pieces, one volume.

Modern style poems in five syllables and in seven syllables, one hundred pieces in all, one volume.

Miscellaneous poems and rhapsodies, thirty pieces in all, one volume.

The Jungsan bokgwe jip, one set in five volumes.

The Gyewon pilgyeong jip, one set in twenty volumes.

Your servant left his house at twelve years of age and sailed west, and as he was going aboard the raft his late father charged him, saying, "If in ten years you do not pass the examination for the presented scholar degree, then do not call yourself my son. I too will not say that I have a son. Go now, and be diligent. Do not let your strength fall slack." Your servant took the stern teaching to himself and did not dare let it go from him, and he studied hard and gave himself no leisure, hoping to fulfill his father's will. Truly, where another did a thing a hundred times he did it a thousand, and in the sixth year of his study abroad his name was set at the tail of the list.

In those days he chanted of his nature and his feelings and lodged them in things to make his pieces, some called rhapsodies and some called poems, and they all but overflowed his box. But a boy's carving of insects is a thing a grown man is ashamed of, and once he had passed he threw them all away. Then he drifted about the Eastern Capital and made of his brush a rice bag, and so at last he had five rhapsodies, one hundred poems, and thirty miscellaneous poems and rhapsodies, three pieces in all.

After that he was appointed constable of Lishui county in Xuanzhou, where the salary was thick and the office was idle, and he ate his fill the whole day long. As it is said that a man studies when there is room left over in his office, he threw away not even an inch of shadow, and of what he made on public and on private occasions there is a collection in five volumes. He pressed himself the harder in the will to raise a mountain, and so set on it the name Bokgwe, and as the place was called Jungsan he put that at its head. When he had left that small post and taken service at Huainan, Gao the Palace Attendant put brush and inkstone wholly into his charge, and the military dispatches came in as spokes come to a hub, and he spent his whole strength in meeting them. In four years of such care there were more than ten thousand pieces, and yet when they were washed and winnowed not one or two in ten were left. He dares to liken it to parting the sand and finding a treasure, and holds it a little better than breaking tiles and scribbling on plaster, and so he has drawn together the Gyewon jip in twenty volumes.

Your servant met with a time of disorder and took his food in a war camp, and this is what is meant by the words, "Here I had my gruel, and here I had my rice." So he took Pilgyeong for the title, following the word of Wang Shao, and the earlier case is something he may lean upon. He goes home bowed and bent, and he has shame before the wild duck and the sparrow. Yet he has broken the ground and he has weeded it and has worked the field of the feelings through, and he holds his own small labor dear and hopes that it may come before the sagely gaze. His collections of poems, rhapsodies, memorials and reports, twenty eight volumes, are sent up together with this dispatch. Respectfully presented.

On a day in the first month of the sixth year of Zhonghe, the former inspecting officer of the commander in chief, gentleman for court service, attendant censor, attendant in the inner palace, granted the purple robe and the golden fish pouch, your servant Choe Chiwon, reports by dispatch.

The Gyewon pilgyeong jip, one set in twenty volumes.

Written by Choe Chiwon, inspecting officer of the commander in chief, attendant censor and attendant in the inner palace.