Respectfully matching the quatrains that the Minister, my examiner, graciously showed me as he passed through Weiyang in flight from the troubles奉和座主尙書避難過維陽寵示。絶句
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) · 3 passages · 86 Chinese characters · reading time 0.3 min
Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) Book 20 — Poems 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.
1Year after year the brambles encroach on the garden of scholars
年年荊棘侵儒苑。處處煙塵滿戰場。豈料今朝覲宣父。豁開凡眼睹文章。
Year after year the brambles encroach on the garden of scholars.
Everywhere smoke and dust fill the fields of battle.
How could I have reckoned that this morning I would look on Xuanfu,
and open wide my common eyes to behold such writing.
Interlinear notes 1
三首
Three poems.
2In a time of chaos there is nothing that is not sad and grievous
亂時無事不悲傷。鸞鳳驚飛出帝鄕。應念浴沂諸弟子。每逢春色耿離腸。
In a time of chaos there is nothing that is not sad and grievous.
The luan and the phoenix take fright and fly from the emperor's land.
You must be thinking of the disciples who bathed in the Yi,
and whenever the colors of spring come, the parting grief stands out clear.
3Though I weep pearls, how could I repay so deep a kindness
濟川終望拯湮沈。喜捧淸詞浣俗襟。唯恨吟歸滄海去。泣珠何計報恩深。
Crossing the stream, I hope at last that the sunken will be raised.
I am glad to hold your pure words and wash my worldly breast.
My one regret is that I go chanting home to the blue sea.
Though I weep pearls, by what plan could I repay so deep a kindness.
Interlinear notes 1
The phrase comes from the old story that when the jiaoren (鮫人) weep, their tears turn to pearls. — translator