Dispatch making Gu Xuanfu, former recorder of Shaozhou, acting magistrate of Tongcheng前邵州錄事參軍顧玄夫攝桐城縣令
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 · 132 Chinese characters · reading time 0.5 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 13 — Notices 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.
1Diligent in the work of the plow, slow to fish for a name
A dispatch to the officer named above. Good water is never dammed, and the humble mountain is high of itself. His belly is full of the Odes and the Documents, and his mouth holds a blade's edge. For solid gain he is diligent only in the work of the plow, and in his quiet moods he has always been slow to fish for a name. Because he has kept away from the gate where men race one another, he still dwells in a lowly perch. Since he can keep himself clean, why should he begrudge loving others? Holding the cords of a prefectural registrar's work is something he once set his mind on. Cutting brocade as the magistrate of a town is where he may now show his merit. To speak long of it, he will never shirk hard toil, so it may be said he will fill the vacant place well. Think a little on how perilous the times are and guard your post with care, and do not say that the customs are so corrupt they cannot be swept away. His house has many with the gift of chanting on snow, and men set him down as a blessing of the scholars. A hundred li thirst for a rule like thunder. Strive, and make the good name of your government ring. This matter. He is sent to act as magistrate of Tongcheng county in Shuzhou.