A separate letter congratulating him on his appointment as Minister of Rites賀除禮部尙書別紙
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 · 172 Chinese characters · reading time 0.7 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 19 — Reports and 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.
1The Master's words on nature and the Way of Heaven cannot be heard
I have heard that by the grace of Heaven you have gloriously received the imperial command, and I bow in my gladness. Long ago Zigong said, "The writings of the Master we may hear. The Master's words on nature and the Way of Heaven we cannot hear." If that is so, then even in the four branches of study a disciple can hardly peer in and take the measure. How much less a man from ten thousand li away. How could his boring and looking up ever reach? Truly I do not copy the fault of seal carving, but ask to add to my grinding and polishing. To force out words that come no nearer than a duck to a swan is to soil the virtue of the one who is like a dragon. Now from afar I have heard of the fine command, and gladness presses close in my heart. Your repute stands high in the Central Terrace and stands first in the ranks of the court, drawn up like mandarin ducks and egrets. Your kindness runs deep as a great hall, and I can only pour out the sincerity of a swallow or a sparrow. I bow and ask that you set aside thoughts of cloud and spring and pull the people out of mire and ember, that your aid may answer the fortune of a thousand years and the treacherous and ambitious flee a punishment of seven days. My traces are undeservedly among your students, and my person is bound to a petty post, so I have no way to set out my congratulation. My humble heart cannot bear the fullness of its clapping and leaping, its awe and dread, its prayer and its blessing. I bow and ask that you look down and consider this. Respectfully submitted.