Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) 桂苑筆耕集 · Choe Chiwon · 886 (Tang, 6th year of the Zhonghe era · Silla, 12th year of King Heongang) · 1 passages · 182 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 8 — Enclosures A collection Choe Chiwon made by choosing out of the writings of his four years in the headquarters of Gao Pian, military commissioner of Huainan under the Tang, binding them into twenty volumes and presenting them to King Heongang of Silla in 886. It holds 366 pieces — memorials and reports sent up to the emperor, the proclamation denouncing Huang Chao, letters to the several military commissioners, orders and dispatches issued to those under him, Daoist and Buddhist texts for services, funeral offerings, records written for the outer wall of Chengdu and for a painting of Annam, and the reports and poems he sent up to Gao Pian. Here is the first report, which begins "I am a man of Silla," and the proclamation against Huang Chao with its line, "Not only do all the men of the world think to kill you openly; the ghosts under the earth have already discussed cutting you down in secret." The last volume holds the poems he made on the voyage home to the country he had left at twelve. It is the oldest collection by a Korean that survives, and when Hong Seokju and Seo Yugu printed it with movable type in 1834 they called it "the root and the beginning of the writing of our Eastern Country." Their two prefaces are translated with it.
I have received favor and unworthily hold office, and I cannot bear my thanks and my fear. I have roughly carried on the calling of my house and have wrongly borne the kindness of the state. Yet my arts and plans were poor from the first, and my merit and toil are very shallow. Early I shared the seal of a chief minister, and again and again I climbed the commander's altar. Whenever blessing went too far and disaster arose, it was because the timber was slight and the charge was heavy. Since ramparts grew many on the four sides and the imperial carriage met the dust, I have not given the worth of a hair's tip in service, and I have deeply failed the trust of a post that is the throat of the land. Sheepskin and fox armpit — I think in vain upon the words of Zhao Jianzi. An earthen pot and the yellow bell — how shall I escape the sigh of the grandee of Chu? Since it is hard to be spread out and used, I wish only to withdraw and be at ease. I was about to shed blood and offer a memorial, giving up my person and asking for old age. How could I have reckoned that I would follow the common case again and unworthily take a rare honor, rising all at once to the high seat of Palace Attendant, and adding once more the uncommon favor of a real fief? The felling of the sandalwood is to be feared; what have I to show for laying the grass flat? The relay roads are not open and the writ has not yet come, and yet he first bent down a glorious greeting and honored me overmuch with encouraging words. Having heard a voice from above the sky, I am not ashamed before the dream within the moon. I have no way to set out my thanks; only my dread is keen, and so on.