The Upper Book破閑集 卷上

Written by Yi Illo, grand master of remonstrance of the left, director of the palace library, academician of the Bomungak, and drafter of royal edicts.

Jinyang was the capital of an ancient king, and the beauty of its streams and hills is the first in Yeongnam. Someone painted a picture of it and presented it at the house of Chancellor Yi, who pasted it on the wall and looked at it.

Yeoryeong of Hyeongyang, a staff officer of the military headquarters, went to call on him, and the chancellor pointed at the picture and said:

"This picture is your native place. It ought to have a verse of its own."

He took up a brush and finished it on the spot.

A few dots of green hills lie pillowed on a blue lake. My lord says this is the picture of Jinyang. Do you know how many thatched huts stand at the water's edge? Is my own cottage painted among them?

All who sat there were struck with admiration at how fine and how quick it was.

I read the Lengzhai yehua of Huihong, and seven or eight of every ten pieces in it are his own work. They are clear and lovely, with thoughts that rise beyond the dust, and I was sorry that I could not get hold of his collected works.

Lately someone showed me the Yunxi ji. Most of it is poems exchanged with others, and when I savored them they all fell far short of the earlier poems. Huihong had rare talent, yet he too could not escape the dulling of his hand when his heart was tied to things. An old saying goes, "Seeing the face is not as good as hearing the name." It is true indeed.

I saw the one line that Pan Dalin sent to Linchuan, and now I fill out the rest.

Wind and rain fill the city and the Double Ninth draws near. Frosted leaves fly in confusion and the chrysanthemums are half yellow. A vulgar air came and spoiled it, so with one line only I send my greeting to the autumn light.

The four treasures of the study are all things a scholar must have, and of them ink alone is the hardest to make. But the capital is where every treasure gathers, and there it is easily had if one looks for it, so no one holds it dear.

When I went out to govern Maengseong, I received a dispatch from the commandery headquarters: I was to make five thousand sticks of ink for the king and deliver them by the first month of spring. I hurried to Gongam village, drove the people to gather a hundred seom of pine soot, brought together good craftsmen, and oversaw the work myself, and only after two months was it done. My face and my clothes were all the color of soot, and I moved to another place and washed with great pain before I went back to the town. Ever since, when I see ink, even an inch of it weighs like a thousand pieces of gold to me, and I dare not treat it lightly.

Thinking of this, I see that what the people of the world receive and use — the paper of Shan Creek, the bamboo of Qizhou, the brocade of Shu, the fine silk of Wu — is all like this. An old poet, pitying the farmers, said, "Who knows that the rice in the bowl is grain by grain all bitter toil?" These are truly the words of a benevolent man.

When I first received Maengseong I made a quatrain.

Zhichuan, the seal cord at his waist, beside the white clouds, gathered cinnabar with his own hands and would learn to be an immortal. I laugh at myself, for the old habit of startled-snake writing is still in me and with the tally of the left I still have charge of green pine soot.

Kim Saeng of Gyerim wielded the brush like a god. His hand was neither cursive nor running, and it leapt clear beyond the fifty-seven styles of the various schools. In our own dynasty the great Hwaeom master Gyeonghyeok and Kim Ipji of the Privy Council won fame for cursive writing, yet they did not escape the vulgar air of Zhongyi and Zhou Yue.

In the last year of King Ui, Gai Yi, an envoy of the Great Jin, had a strange and soaring force in his brush, so Choe Dang of Cheongha bought his writing and always hung it on the wall to enjoy it. Someone borrowed it to look at, kept the true piece, and returned a traced copy. The academician recited Dongpo's lines, "Draw a cake on the ground and it need not be like one, but it will make a foolish child drool," and he laughed and asked nothing.

When I heard of it I made a quatrain in jest.

Ziyun's spring earthworms idly made their rows; the drunken Huaisu's startled snake has gone far off. Waking from the dream, no one knows who got the deer; the roads are many, and one sighs in vain over the lost sheep.

Jajin of Hangyang went out as magistrate to Gwandong, and his wife, Lady Min, was fierce and jealous beyond compare. One of the maidservants had a good deal of beauty, and she would not let him go near her. Jajin said:

"This is a very easy thing."

So he traded the girl to a man of the town for an ox and raised it. When I heard of it I made a quatrain in jest.

The oriole above the lake has flown far off and does not return. The girdle jade on the riverbank is cold and hard to seek. Where now are the peach trees of the garden and the willows of the lane? Only a black peony stands beside the railing.

But the road was blocked and I could not send it by post. More than twenty years later Jajin newly rented a house in Hongdojeong village. His wall joined mine and our lanes met, and we followed one another morning and evening; and he asked to see the drafts of my poems.

I brought out one volume and showed it to him. Halfway through his reading there was a title, "On hearing that a friend, pressed by his wife, traded a concubine for an ox." Jajin started, and then said slowly:

"Who is this?"

I laughed and said:

"My lord, it is you."

Jajin said:

"Was there such a thing? Yet it was only a moment's sport within the inner rooms, and you might well have left off mocking and judging it. Still, if you had not done so, what else would help your name as a poet last ten thousand ages?"

Lady Min died before Jajin, and he lived a widower for eight years and still went near no woman. He may be called a gentleman of steadfast conduct.

Hwang Binyeon, the top graduate, was on night duty at the Okdang, the Hall of Jade, at the mid-autumn festival. The long sky had no cloud and the moonlight was like daylight, so he made a poem and showed it to Lord O Semun of the same office.

The middle month between the season’s last and its first, a sky whose heat and cool are all one, and why is the spring night so silent

while the autumn evening alone is loud with noise? The moonlight surely must be the same as yours; it is the human heart that makes it so. I know that you can settle such a matter: which of these two scenes is truly the finer?

When I savored it, it had deep reason and deep flavor in it. I have not seen the answering piece, so now I take up its meaning and reply.

The wheel of the moon comes round full twelve times in a year. Why is it that when autumn reaches its middle the shadow that floats across the sky leans of itself? The golden wind gathers up what veiled it, the jade dew washes it lovely and bright, and so it is other than a spring night. I entrust this to a poem to tell it in full.

Angam Temple, north of Danju, is not far from the capital. Its hills are strange and its waters are uncommon, and a deep and secret charm lies far within it. Damji of Nongseo and I once studied there. Every day at dusk we leaned on the railing and let our eyes range. The fishing fires flared and died, the clouds floated and the mist lay thin, and the thatched roofs ran on one after another, as if we were above the Peach Blossom Spring at Wuling.

When we were about to go back, the old master of the temple caught my sleeve and begged earnestly for even a single word, so I wrote on the wall.

In front it presses on blue waves, behind it there is green rock. Among the lonely reeds, half are pines and cedars. Lord Xie's pleasure in roaming was only a pair of clogs; Zhang Han's longing for home filled a single sail. I would only whip the white crane on Gou Mountain; there is no need to wet a blue gown at Penpu. I have wandered the ten continents and the three isles, and I am ashamed that my bones so lightly left the common sort.

Twenty years later Jajin went out to inspect the southern districts, grew weary of traveling, and came into this temple to rest. The wall with that poem on it was half fallen, dust had settled and moss had eaten it, and the letters could hardly be read. He said to those beside him, "Even if no blind was hung to cover and guard it, it is fortune enough that no white clay was daubed over it." Then he had a poem board made at once, wrote the colophon on it himself, and charged the three officers of the temple not to let it fall and be lost.

On the night of the first full moon a sewn silk lantern was hung before the king's seat, and the Hallimwon was ordered to make lantern poems and present them; then craftsmen cut gold leaf into letters and pasted them on, and all of the poems sang of the scene of that night.

In King Myeong's time I entered the Okdang in attendance and at once composed and presented this.

The wind is fine and does not let the golden flowers fall; the night is long and slowly I watch the jade insects form. Know that there is one piece of a red heart here that would help the brightness of the sun and moon in the twin pupils.

The king praised it greatly. After this they all sang of the lanterns, and it began with me.

Long ago, at the beginning of King In's reign, Heo Hongjae, the state councillor, entered the Okdang in attendance as the top graduate of the examination. When King Ui came to the throne, Lord Yu Hui and Lord Hwang Binyeon entered one after another. In King Myeong's time Lord Yi Sunu sounded first, and I, with no talent, followed after him. Lately Lord Kim Gunsu too has come in on my heels, so I congratulated him with a quatrain.

For ten years I held the brush in my teeth and spread the king's words. How I admire you, who have entered in turn upon the spring of the Okdang! Only now do I know how precious the flowered bricks are: we are all of us first men through the Dragon Gate.

Kim Ipji of the Privy Council, besides his writing and his calligraphy, was better still at bamboo in ink. Once he presented two clumps from the banks of the Xiang to Chancellor Choe, the grand master of rites, and the chancellor made a quatrain to thank him.

The former king in that year called them living bamboo. How many times did I think of them and idly hold my feeling in? Now two clumps stand of a sudden facing the western hall, and I fear only that their roots will strike and grow in the ground.

Kim Gunsu, the top graduate, is his son. He has the method of his house and is wonderfully fine at it. In the past I was with Gunsu in the Censorate, and in the office there was a plain screen. The gentlemen there asked him to paint one branch and had me write the colophon, so I wrote at once.

The layman of Xuetang sounded out with his poems, and the grace of his ink play also drew from life. Far off I think of Wen Xiaoxiao of the Jiangnan, who surely sent one branch of his line to Pengcheng.

The old man Byeongna once gave me a small screen of bamboo in ink painted by the layman Su, and on the back he wrote a line from a poem of Bai Letian: "It commands the good wind and mist and looks down on all the grasses and trees." The traces of his brush were stranger and finer still.

I had once studied this, and there was no paper and no plain screen that I did not sweep my brush over, and I thought I had caught something of his likeness, so I made a poem: "The leftover wave still reaches the green jade stones; I fear that in a former life I was Wen Xiaoxiao." But in truth I was not skilled, and I got only the shape of it.

My cousin, the abbot of Cheollim, asked me to paint a paper screen, and I drew only a single branch. It stretched aslant across four panels, but I did not get as far as the leaves. A painter saw it and said:

"The joints of this branch are not what the common sort can do. It has the bone of Dongpo's ink play."

Then he set eight or nine leaves in among them, and at once a lonely force came into it.

Long ago Pan Yue took the meaning of Yue Guang and wove it into a famous piece, and Zichan of Dongli still polished the state papers of Zheng. Looking now at this bamboo, the work left by carving and chiseling and the skill of spreading it broadly helped one another and made it, so that it is seamless, as if it came from the furnace and hammer of a single hand. It may be said that the spirit was gathered in it. Someone praised it and said: "Heaven and earth are one breath, and Hu and Yue are of one heart; this is the utmost of all fine things, and no trace of it can be found."

I once saw two lengths of cursive writing on the wall of a noble house, smoked by fire and stained where the roof leaked, and their shape and color were quite strange and old. The poem on them ran:

A poem was written on a red leaf and went out of Fengcheng; the traces of tears blend with the ink and are still plain to see. The flowing water of the palace moat was good for nothing at all and let out one piece of a palace lady's heart.

The guests at the gathering all put their heads together. It was the trace of my own hand. A guest started and said:

"The worn silk is cold and only the traces are left. This does not seem a thing of recent times."

I said:

"This is one of the poems I made on history. I did not compose it myself, and I have never once written cursive with a brush."

When Yeongnak of Cheonsu was going out as magistrate of Yangju, Jajin and I braved the dawn and came to the gate of Cheonsu Temple to see him off. Yeongnak was held back by a friend and had not come by midday. The two of us walked slowly and looked for a monk's room, and it was silent and empty. I happened to write with thin ink at the head of a board.

I wait for a guest and the guest does not come; I look for the monk and the monk too is gone. Only the birds outside the wood are left, and their song seems to urge me to take up the wine jar.

More than twenty years later I saw a monk at Jajin's house. His look was that of a man of the Way, large and out of the common. He took hold of me and said:

"Long ago I had the favor of being shown a fine piece, and I thank you for it now."

I was blank and could not make it out, and the monk recited this poem and said:

"I am the one who kept that temple at that time."

We laughed aloud together. And so I append it to the family collection.

Mount Jiri is also called Duryu. It rises from Mount Baekdu in the north and runs on, flower peak and mushroom valley linked and linked again, until at Daebang commandery it coils and knots for several thousand li. More than ten districts lie around it, and it takes ten days or a month to go the whole length of its edge.

The old men handed this down among themselves:

"In the midst of it is Cheonghak Valley. The road is very narrow, barely wide enough for a man to pass. Crawl on for two or three li and you come out into an open country. On all four sides are good fields and rich soil, fit for sowing and planting. Only blue cranes nest there, and that is why it has the name. It must be where men who turned their backs on the world once lived, for the broken walls and ruined foundations are still there among the thorn bushes."

Long ago my cousin Chancellor Choe and I had a mind to shake out our robes and go far away, and we promised each other to look for this valley, thinking that if we carried in two or three calves in bamboo baskets we would hear nothing of the world and the world nothing of us. In the end we went from Hwaeom Temple to Hwagae county and lodged at Sinheung Temple. Every place we passed was a land of immortals: a thousand rocks vied in beauty and ten thousand valleys vied in flowing, and among bamboo fences and thatched houses the peach and apricot blossoms shone through one another, so that it was hardly the world of men. Yet the place they call Cheonghak Valley we never found. So I left a poem on the rock.

Mount Duryu is far away and the evening clouds hang low; ten thousand valleys and a thousand rocks are like Kuaiji. With my staff I would look for Cheonghak Valley, but beyond the wood I hear only the white gibbons cry. The towers are faint and far, the three fairy mountains distant; the moss is dim, and four letters are written there. I ask, where is the source of the immortals? Falling blossoms and flowing water lead a man astray.

Yesterday in my library I happened to open the Wuliu xiansheng ji and read the Taoyuan ji, and I went over it again and again. It seems that men of Qin, hating the disorder, led their wives and children into a deep and difficult country and settled where the hills turn and the waters double back, where not even a woodcutter could come. In the Taiyuan era of Jin a fisherman had the luck to reach it once, but he forgot the way at once and could not find it again.

Later ages have painted it in colors and passed it on in song, and there is no one who does not call the Peach Blossom Spring a world of immortals, the capital of those who ride feathered carriages and whirlwind wheels and live long and endure. It is only that they have not read the record closely, for in truth it is no different from Cheonghak Valley. How might I find a lofty scholar like Liu Ziji and go there once to look for it?

A disciple stands toward his examination master as one whose writing was known for what it was and who by that was lifted out of the common ranks to the blue clouds; it is what the ancients called the meeting of Bo Ya and Zhong Ziqi. So even when his own place has risen to the highest council, he still stands in the row of the sons and dares not meet him as an equal.

Long ago Pei Hao of the Later Tang presided over the examinations three times in the Tongguang era. When his disciple Ma Yisun took charge of the examination and brought the newly chosen scholars to call on him, he made a quatrain.

Three times I presided over the rites, and now at eighty I see disciples in the house of my own disciple.

In our own dynasty scholars were first chosen by poem and rhapsody in King Gwang's time, but it had never happened that an examination master saw his own disciple preside over the choosing. At the beginning of King Myeong's reign the academician Han Eonguk led his disciples to call on Chancellor Choe Yucheong, and he too made a poem.

They come in a row to call on me. How am I so honored? What joy to see the disciples of my disciple!

This followed the old example of Lord Pei, yet all who heard of it called it a splendid gathering.

In the eighth year since our present king came to the throne, Jo Chung, the director of the academy, likewise led his disciples to the house of Chancellor Im Yu to give thanks, and the chancellor was prime minister and still in the Chancellery. Such a thing has not been in old times or new. How strange and fine it is! I make a poem to record how far it stands out.

For ten years in the Yellow Pavilion you have helped the peace; three times you opened the spring examination and alone kept the pledge. A man of the state has always repaid a man of the state, and now a disciple has gained a disciple of his own. Wind and cloud change and the scaffolds clash together; hemp cloth and kudzu cloth in their throng make Lu shine. With one cup from the golden gate I pray for your ten thousand years, and the jade pipes ring out bright and glad that the oriole has moved.

Reversible poems arose in Qi and Liang, and they are on the whole a game among letters. Long ago, after the wife of Dou Tao wove her brocade, the shuttle and the sleeve still remained, and the three worthies of Song were all skilled at it. The Panzhong li in the Nanxu ji can be read round like a ring and divided into forty poems, and its rhymes do agree, yet its blood and veins are not joined to one another.

Yi Jisim, an academician of our dynasty, felt the autumn and made a paired reversible poem that came out quite well.

The heat scatters and I know that autumn has come early; far off, little by little, I am touched and saddened. The tangled pines have set green parasols upside down; in the flowing water the green vines are long. On the far peak the mist gathers white; in the high tower a cool wind scatters. Halfway up the sky the bright moon is good and shines into a quiet room and glows.

I too copied his form and offered a poem to the minister of that day.

I studied early and roamed nine years in office and made my poems, and toiled at them for nothing. An old man's thoughts are troubled as the spring wanes; my failing side locks are new with the frost at dawn. The steamer is turned over and the morning cooking has stopped; a hungry belly is louder still at night. My heart to repay kindness is earnest, but who will lift out the drying fish?

Now a reversible poem is one that reads easily and smoothly forward, and backward too shows no sign of roughness or stumbling; only when the words and the sense are both fine is it called well made.

Chrysanthemums have very many kinds, more than anyone can count, but yellow must be taken for the true color. So an old poet said, "Among the five colors it is prized above the rest, and after a thousand flowers it stands alone and high."

Yesterday I went to the house of Choe of the Privy Council, and in the back garden the yellow flowers were at their height and their gold took the eye. My lord pointed at them and said:

"I meant to wait for you and trouble you for one song of them. It is late now, so let us fix another day."

I drank two or three cups and came out. On horseback I happened on a long verse, and I mean to present it.

The auspicious duck of the Han pool has just washed its feathers; the goddess of the Luo has gone back, and dust rises on her stockings. Know that the rank of an immortal does not wither with age: the lonely golden wind enters the bones of the flower. It draws back the beauty left to it and turns three springs around, and the poet is glad to see one branch broken off. The golden cup brims and waits for a later meeting, and the house of a lord does not fear the bite of ice and frost.

King Ye by nature loved learning and honored the elegant arts, and he opened the Cheongyeongak for this above all and debated the old books with his academicians every day.

Once he came to the Saru pavilion, where the tree peonies in front were in full bloom, and he ordered the scholars of the palace offices to mark a candle and make poems of seven syllables in six rhymes. An Borin, aide to the crown prince, came first, and the favors dealt out by rank were richer still.

At that time Master Gang Iryong's name as a poet moved the world, and the king's heart was waiting to see what he would write. As the candle was near its end he had barely got one couplet, and he put the paper in his sleeve and prostrated himself before the royal seat. The king ordered a young eunuch to fetch it at once, and this was what was written.

The white-haired drunken old man looks behind the hall; the clear-eyed old scholar leans beside the railing.

So fine and so exact was his use of the old stories. The king sighed and praised it without end and said:

"This is what the ancients meant by, 'A mortar head with flower pins all over the face is not equal to Xi Shi half made up.'"

He comforted him and sent him away. Now I fill out what was left undone.

One spray of peach red is worth ten thousand coins; the light shade has met just the sky that rears flowers. The immortal's toilet borrows no rouge to dye it; the news of spring comes first upon the jiegu drum. The fair season of Chu falls on the hundred and fifth day; the new favorite of the Han palace is first among three thousand. By day the sun shines and the flush of wine comes early; by night she fears the cold wind and will not sleep. (The white-haired … leans beside the railing.) The candlelight slowly fails and the chanting grows harder; I plucked the beauty that was left and put it in one couplet.

Whether a poem is good or bad does not lie in being slow or quick, first or after. Yet the one who sings out is in front and the one who answers is always behind. The one who sings out is at ease and unhurried and is pressed by nothing, while the one who answers cannot help being dragged along and falling into rough places. So a man who follows another's rhymes, however famous his talent, often falls short, and the reason of it is truly so.

The old man of Chu saw Meishan's poem on snow in the cha rhyme and loved how well he used the rhyme, so he first made one piece in answer. His heart was still not satisfied, and he went on with five more. Though his use of the old stories grew stranger and his words came out rougher, and he meant to press it down with strangeness and roughness, he did not escape the same fault as before. The art of war says, "Better that I press the other man than that the other man press me." How true it is.

This morning I climbed to the library as the snow was first clearing, and remembering the poems of the two old men I made two pieces in answer. I too could not escape being dragged along, and those who see them should forgive me.

A thousand woods are near dark and the crows have gone to roost; the bright pearls glitter and still light the carriage. We are startled alike at bones of an immortal, like a young girl's; the spring wind has no way to govern these wild flowers. The sound strays in the fine rain and rings on the window paper; the cold draws a traveler's sorrow to the wine shop. Ten thousand li are all made a country of silver, and at every crossing the three forks are gone.

The clearing light is keen and would call the dawn crows; the thunder rolls on and on and follows the fragrant carriage. The cold gets into the green wine and the flush comes hard; its force presses the red lamps and lets no flower open. When one oar goes off, I know the traveler's pleasure; where the lone smoke rises, I make out a mountain house. I shut my gate and lie high, and no one comes; I keep my copper coins and leave them to the painted rake.

At the beginning of King Ui's reign a clerk of the Cheonggyo station raised a blue ox whose shape was out of the common, and he presented it to the court. The king ordered the writing officials of the nearby offices to make poems and set the rhymes, and the rhymes were rough and steep, so that there was no one who did not look troubled.

Kim Hyosun of the Donggwan came first and Sin Eungnyong of the Okdang next. Kim wrote, "The phoenix is ashamed to look on virtue and come to nest in the tower, and the horse is ashamed to gather its essence and answer the Fang stars above." Sin wrote, "Tapping the horn, one sighed long ago at meeting Master Ning; the smearing of the bell is now escaped by passing the hall of Qi."

The king read them three or four times and said:

"The use of the old stories is well done, but the words come near to being irreverent. So I put it second."

Then he bestowed fine wine and silk in different measures.

Im Jongbi of Seoha was also a man of talent. When he heard of it he sighed and said:

"Had I been at that gathering, I would surely have said, 'Spring is loosed on Taolin and it treads the red chamber.'"

He never found the matching line, so now I fill it out.

By the waters of the Milky Way it follows the fairy maidens; a black peony flower comes to Xuetang. At the Hangu Pass it goes home at dawn and a purple air floats; spring is loosed on Taolin and it treads the red chamber.

In the art of polishing a line, Du Shaoling alone exhausted its wonder. Lines like "The sun and the moon are birds in a cage, and heaven and earth are duckweed on the water," or "Ten summers, the kudzu of Mount Min; three frosts, the fulling block of a house in Chu," are of this kind.

Again, a man's talent is like a vessel square or round and cannot hold everything, while the strange sights and rare delights of the world that can gladden the heart and the eye are very many. If his talent truly does not reach his intent, it is like setting a dull hoof on the thousand-li road between Yan and Yue: however hard the whip is plied, it cannot go far.

So the men of old, even with soaring talent, did not dare set their hand down carelessly but added the labor of tempering and polishing, and only then could they hang their light on the rainbow and shine through a thousand ages. As for hammering for ten days and refining each season, chanting in the morning and reciting at night, they twisted their beards and could not settle on a single word, and in a whole year made only three poems; one worked at "knock" and "push" and rode straight into the governor of the capital; one grew thin from chanting; one passed Fan Mountain as he walked; one's thought was spent on the western peak and the bell struck at midnight. Such things cannot be listed one by one. When it comes to Su Shi and Huang Tingjian, their use of the old stories is finer still and their soaring spirit breaks out sideways, and in the wonder of polishing a line they may run abreast of Du Shaoling.

The academician Hwang Won of our dynasty wrote at a county lodge, "In the mountain town the rain is fierce and turns to hail; in the land of marshes the shade is thick and rainbows are often set loose." Yi Sunu of the Jami, going out to hold a garrison in Gwandong, wrote, "In the camp at Xiliu, a newly come senior general; beneath the jami blossoms, an old man of the Chancellery." My friend Giji gave me these lines, "The wind is sharp and the far-off peng moves from the north; the moon is bright and the startled magpie is not easy on its branch."

The remonstrance officer of Hyeongyang, roaming by chance at the Palcheok hall on Mount Cheonma, chanted painfully all evening and could not link his thoughts, and only in the morning did he turn back, letting the reins go slack and chanting as he rode. When he reached the capital gate he got one couplet: "At the head of the rock the pines are old and there is one sliver of moon; at the sky's edge the clouds hang low and there are a thousand dots of hills." He whipped his lame horse back, shook the door ring with his hand, went straight into the office, plied his brush to write it on the wall, and went home.

Master Gang Iryong meant to make a poem on the egret, and again and again he braved the rain and went to the stream south of Cheonsu Temple to watch it, and suddenly he got a line: "It flies and cuts the green mountain's waist." Then he said to those around him:

"Only today have I come to a place where the men of old never came. After me there should be some rare talent who can carry it on."

I think this line does not truly go beyond our elders, and that he said so only because it came of painful chanting. I filled it out: "It takes a nest at the top of the tall tree, and flies and cuts the green mountain's waist." When one such line as this is set in a whole piece, the rest may be roughly got up and it will do. It is just as the pearl plant does not wither and the jade stream is fair of itself.

Uhu of the gyobang was called Hwawonok as a child, and in color and in art she was first of her time. Hwang the top graduate made the Song of Uhu, and in it he said, "Surely she grudges that the fair eyebrows died before the horse, and so she would be given the name Uhu instead." Yu Hui the top graduate said, "The ox's heart should only be served to Wang Xizhi." My friend Giji said, "She should only follow the Herdboy star in heaven." And so Uhu was made her name.

They asked me to make one too, and I made this.

Do you not see Shi Chong riding his ox, swift as though he flew, and Lü Zhu, whose lovely form was fine as iris and orchid? Do you not see, again, Lord Wei riding his ox and reading as he went, and Xue'er, whose exquisite singing pierced the clouds and sky? From of old the people in silk and gauze have as a rule stood behind the ox. I take this and ask Uhu: can it be said to suit your mind? Sweetly she holds in a smile and gently bows her head, and one tune worth a thousand in gold wishes me long life.

Long ago, when I went out as an aide to Gyeyang, I received a dispatch from the surveillance commissioner, came to Yongsan, and lodged in the library of Chancellor Han Eonguk. The peaks coil and bend in the shape of a blue snake, and the library sits right on its forehead; the river comes down below it and divides into two branches, and beyond the river there is a far peak that looks like the character for mountain. I chanted aloud and rose, and let my brush write on the wall.

Two waters brim and part like a swallow's tail; three hills are far and faint, riding the turtle's head. If some year I am allowed to attend the dove staff, together we will face the blue waves and make friends with the white gulls.

Yeongnak of Cheonsu is a disciple of Chancellor Han. He called on the chancellor, and when the wine went round he recited this poem. The chancellor set down his cup, chanted it over, and said:

"My roaming at Hanyang was fifty years ago by my reckoning. Hearing this one verse, the light of those hills and the color of those waters are clear before my eyes. This is what the ancients called a painting within a poem."

On a day in the fourth month of the third year of Huangtong, a gyehae year, Kim, the royal secretary, received the king's will, and on the day the two lords received their commission they went to the Nakseongjae school at Ilwol Temple to study together with the scholars. On the eighth day of the intercalary fourth month they made linked verses.

Choe Sanbo, a palace attendant, took the word gye (溪) and said at once, "The brook runs murmuring and always learns from the sea," and King Myeongjong said, "The soul in my dream starts, and I am glad to look up to heaven."

Kim Sukcheong took the word sa (絲) and said at once, "The willow straight as thread stands on the spring bank," and King Myeongjong said, "The new moon fine as an eyebrow hangs at the edge of the evening cloud."

Kim Jaching said, "The brook sounds through the wood and comes from a far valley," and the senior lord said, "The mountain cloud touches the rock and thickens on the high peak."

Geum Sangsun said, "Peak after peak, dotted thick with spears and halberds," and the senior lord said, "The willows droop and hang as if threads were strung."

The next day it was taken inside and the king looked at it.