Yetgeul › Gyewon Pilgyeongjip (A Plowing of the Brush in the Cassia Garden) › Book 20 — Poems
Two quatrains in reply to the parting of Wu Luan the licentiate酬吳巒秀才惜別二絶句
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.
1One piece of heart must not be ashamed before others
榮祿危時未及親。莫嗟歧路暫勞身。今朝遠別無他語。一片心須不愧人。
In a time of peril, honor and stipend have not reached your parents. Do not sigh that the forked road wearies your body for a while. This morning, at our far parting, I have no other words. One piece of heart must not be ashamed before others.
2At the edge of the sky a lone sail flies, cleaving the waves
殘日塞鴻高的的。暮煙汀樹遠依依。此時回首情何限。天際孤帆窣浪飛。
In the fading sun the frontier geese are high and clear. In the evening mist the trees on the bank are far and faint. At this moment I turn my head, and how can this feeling have a bound. At the edge of the sky a lone sail flies, cleaving the waves.