To Minister Yu Tao of Sizhou — the second泗州于濤尙書 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 · 119 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.
Of late I heard quietly that there was talk of pulling up the city, and so I set out a loyal warning, hoping to preserve the far design. I have received your reply and glimpsed its deep intent. Now the barbarians of Xu give free rein to cruelty, but this is surely not the ability of the Viscount of Chu. The customs of Si hold loyalty, and are not to be measured against the cowardice of the men of Xiao. To plan one's own collapse — how could that be called finishing well? Though it is said that there is care in damming a river, how could one secretly think like a man who sits in a well? I lately received the imperial decree, and my marching date is much pressed. As soon as I can pass through your prefecture, the bandits' ramparts can be scraped away. You have not yet come to the hardship of the blood-dark wheel. Press on a while longer. As for the words about pouring water into the cauldron, I have already received your command. The rest was set out in my earlier letter, and I will not trouble to repeat it here. And so on.