A memorial thanking him for leave to follow the army謝令從軍狀
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 · 158 Chinese characters · reading time 0.6 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 17 — Reports to the Throne 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.
As to the above: just now I saw the office of guests convey your order. You lent me a boat so that I might follow the army on its march. A deep favor has come down, and my stout spirit quietly stretches itself. I steel my heart and wish to serve you at a gallop. I am so moved by your virtue that I can hardly keep from leaping. I bow and consider: I am a clerk running about in the dust, a rotten scholar from beyond the sea. My five skills are no capital for saving myself, and my one stroke has nowhere to be used. I only grew more indignant, and had already taken sinking away as my lot. It is not that I lacked the heart to throw down my brush. The times simply never matched me. In vain I held the will to ask for a long cord. My strength, too, could not accomplish it. Who would have said that I should suddenly receive so singular a kindness? You did not discard my lowly traces. You allowed me to follow your banners and lent me a boat. A lame foot can bear nothing, yet I dare hope you will think to tether even this colt. What good fortune has so slight a figure, that all at once it is granted the undeserved honor of sailing with the painted heron? Still more, at a time when I would weep at the crossroads, I have received forever the gift of a crossing over the river. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of its gratitude for your kindness, its joy, and its dread. Respectfully submitted.
Interlinear notes 1
Matched to the rhetorical question that follows, this is rendered "how should I have dared hope." 敢望 may also be read as a modest "I venture to hope." — translator