To his lordship Wang, Commander in Chief — the second都統王令公 第二
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 · 127 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 9 — 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.
Again and again I have sent letters by men of my own and have poured out a little of my sincerity. Then I received his glorious letter, and I engrave his rare kindness the deeper. I do not know how his honored body has been of late. The star of summer has gathered in its fire, and the pipe of autumn has blown up its ash. I wait for the baleful vapor to melt away like snow, and I think of the army's voice shaking like thunder. I humbly reckon that with the stately virtue of a gentleman and the valiant sincerity of a brave man he may lean upon a majesty that has blessing in it and take his oath before a host that does not clamor. The merit is set upon a single stroke, and the case must be safe in every way. The wisdom of Grand Tutor Xie foreknew the great victory, and the songs of Adjutant Bao waited only for the restoration. I humbly ask that he carefully keep the measure of his rest and his labor, and so answer the hope of the age. I have always held his former kindness in my mouth, and now I receive his warm words besides. I pray morning and evening, and he may measure my low earnestness. And so on.