Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 20 — Poems

In reply to the farewell of Yang Shan the licentiate酬楊贍秀才送別

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 · 64 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.

1The wind and moon of Guangling will wait for us to raise the cup

海槎雖定隔年廻。衣錦還鄕愧不才。暫別蕪城當葉落。遠尋蓬島趁花開。谷鶯遙想高飛去。遼豕寧慙再獻來。好把壯心謀後會。廣陵風月待銜杯。

The sea raft is set to turn back only after the year has passed. To go home in brocade shames me, for I have no talent. I leave Wucheng for a while, at the time when the leaves fall, and I seek the far isle of Penglai, to arrive when the flowers open. The valley oriole thinks of flying high and far away. Why should the Liaodong pig be ashamed to be offered again. Hold your bold heart well, and plan for a meeting hereafter. The wind and moon of Guangling will wait for us to raise the cup.

Interlinear notes 2

時楊生有隨計之行

At this time Master Yang had a journey to make for the examinations.

Wucheng (蕪城) is another name for Yangzhou (揚州). — translator