To Minister Pei Qianyu of Xuanshe — the second宣歙裵虔餘尙書 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 · 138 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 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.
Last year, on account of the son of the Jing family, there were the words of a small man. Matters of slander and false charge rose up in number, and there was no little whispering behind our backs, so that at every turn it became a sparing of the vessel for the rat's sake, and I was long kept from drawing near a good man. The other day, the chief of the rebels being broken already and the womb of disaster split of itself, I repaired our old friendship at last and managed to send a little of my sincerity. Then the Minister was so good as to invite a fine guest on purpose and to send thick gifts from afar, stopping the laughter of the four quarters and opening forever the gladness of our two lands. Holding up his fair present, my glory grows; glimpsing his elegant words, I clap my hands in secret. Still more, in facing the guest from the lotus pond I have truly met an immortal of the cassia garden. From this time the clear waves of Gouzhu can carry off what is foul, and the far branches of the Sui canal can wash out the flaw as well. Refined many times, one comes to know the pure spirit of gold; the burning done, we know together the coolness of jade. I humbly ask that with his kind mirror he look down upon my foolish heart. And so on.