To Minister of Works Zhou Bao of Zhexi — the fifth浙西周寶司空 第五
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 · 105 Chinese characters · reading time 0.4 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.
His own envoy, the staff officer (yaya) Fu Xun, has arrived. I opened and read the splendid letter and received the precious gift. Its brightness takes the eye; I bear it on my head and engrave it on my heart. Still more, I hear that he has already received the words of Yao and has forever put away his answering anger. The righteousness of keeping up friendship and giving the people rest shines far in the Lin jing (麟經), and the sincerity of offering loyalty and repaying the sovereign passes often in the letters of the wild goose. A glad air is spread along both banks, and a fair name is shaken through all four neighbors. Respectfully I look up to the rule he has made, and deeply I strengthen our former bond. I wish only to guard within against the scorpion's slander and to stop without the fox's suspicion. Surely I am set upon spending my strength for the public house, and I shall not dare to deceive my own heart even in a dark room. I humbly ask that he grant it deeply. And so on.