The Middle Book破閑集 卷中

The wise man sees a thing before it takes shape. The foolish man says there is nothing the matter and rests at ease, making no worry of it. Only after the trouble has come does he burn his spirit and spend his strength thinking to save the day, and what does that add to the fate of surviving or perishing, of rising or falling? This is why Bian Que could not save Marquis Huan from his illness.

Long ago, in the time of Emperor Wen of Han, the realm was well governed and at peace and the people were prosperous, yet Jia Yi wept aloud over it. Emperor Taizong of Tang, from the day he opened his enterprise, grew more watchful and more fearful every day and was never slack for a moment, yet Wei Zheng still set before him the ten gradual failings. So an old book says, "The one who remonstrates stops it at the source and does not let it open." It is to guard against ice when the frost comes, and to shut out the jade cup when the lacquer dish appears.

Long ago King Ui inherited an enterprise of plenty and peace and perfect rule that had come down through dozens of reigns. He had been on the throne a long time, and nothing was left unattended, so everyone said the enterprise of peace was as safe as Mount Tai, and no one dared to speak. Mun Geukgyeom, the remonstrance official, knocked straight at the gate of heaven and sent up a single sealed letter, and everything in it struck the sickness of the time. People said the phoenix was crying in the morning sun. But the king did not grant it, so the lord took off his court robe, went home, and made a poem.

When Zhu Yun broke the railing he was not seeking praise. When Yuan Ang stopped the carriage, was it for his own sake? One piece of red sincerity heaven has not yet lit, so he whips a lean horse and draws back, step by hesitant step.

When King Myeong ascended the throne he drew the lord up and set him in the place of throat and tongue. The safety and the danger of the country, the benefit and the hurt of the people, the worth and the unworth of the officers, all of it reached the royal ear with not a hair's breadth of blockage. That to this day the neighboring states are bound in friendship and all is quiet within and without, with nothing to fear, is truly the lord's doing.

While the lord held the place of prime minister he recommended me, so that I entered the Okdang and served there. A year later the lord died, and I made a dirge.

Early, at the Changhe Gate, he pushed the clouds aside and cried out. Late, toward Yuyuan, he caught the sun and turned it back. Long did the red phoenix bathe upon the pool. Why then does the white cock hurry him in a dream?

People of that time said, "The great constancy the lord kept while standing in court, from beginning to end, does not go beyond these two lines." Even to call it a true record would be fair.

Yesterday I passed the lord's old villa. The grass and the trees were deep green, and a spring came out of a crack in the rock. It was a place where he used to wander and feast, so I lingered there sadly and could not leave, and I made a poem and left it on the wall.

Cold, cold water below the rock winds and turns as if it had a thought. Who knows that this branch of ice and snow still carries the Phoenix Pool with it? The place where I peered again at the Eastern Hall, the hour when the day was failing at the West Gate, I write a poem and leave it half on the wall, to let the Nine Springs know a little of it.

Kim Buui of the Privy Council was the younger brother of Duke Munyeol, the chancellor. He too was known for his writing and for his service. Once he took up the staff of office and went to the Central Court, and Emperor Zhenzong loved his talent and treated him with rare courtesy.

Two guests came to the hostel one day and drank a little. One of them said, "In the sky above there are three hundred and sixty degrees, and among the stars there is the Oxherd." The next said, "On the go board there are three hundred and sixty points, and there are horses but no ox." The lord said at once, "In the year there are three hundred and sixty days, and on the day of Ipchun they use an ox of earth." The whole company bowed to his quickness.

Once he was attending a banquet and was just growing drunk when the emperor showed him a poem in seven-word lines and six rhymes, and sent an attendant to press him to match it and send it up. The lord framed not a single thought beforehand. He drew his brush and finished it on the spot. This is part of it.

Beside the Chenxiang Pavilion I hear a new tune. Before the Lili Gate I offer thanks for the great peace. There is no way to repay even a little the virtue of heaven and earth, so with a drunken brush alone I thank you for my making and my rearing.

The emperor did not stop sighing and praising, and his gifts grew richer still.

In the last years of Emperor Huizong the Jin took Bianjing, carried the two emperors away captive, and turned north. Prince Kang took over the precious seat and sent Yang Yingcheng as envoy on a courtesy visit, asking to borrow a road and go to inquire after the place where the two emperors were staying. The counsel of the court held firm and would not allow it. The lord was ordered to compose the reply.

"The benevolence of heaven and earth lets all things come each to its own fulfillment, and the virtue of an emperor does not reproach the multitude for what is hard for them." He also wrote, "They are many and we are few, so it is already hard to contend with them. When the lips are gone the teeth are cold, and how then do we know that this is not good fortune?" And again, "To lead the lords and honor the king of Zhou, we dare not hope for the old deeds of Qi and Jin. To take charge of the lost land and write a Yu gong, we would at least not lose the old bearing of Qingzhou and Xuzhou."

Duke Munyeol had entered the Secretariat first, and so the lord stayed in the Privy Council more than ten years. By nature he loved reading. He opened a separate room and was always weighing and discussing writing there with the officers, so that even his wife and his concubines rarely saw his face. When he lay ill, a courtier dreamed that horse dung came down from among the clouds, and when he asked about it he was told, "That is the robe in which Kim of the Privy Council rises to heaven today." The world said he was the essence of a star of heaven.

Among the sons of rich and noble houses, unless the taste is born in them, few are skilled in writing. Kim Cheon of the Privy Council had the nobility of the eight leaves of the Xiao house, yet he threw off the old habit of silk robes and sat upright all day over his books. He did not care to make verses and prose, and when he had something to make he would always wash his brush in a bowl of ice and only then set to work. So not many of his pieces have come down to the world, but what has come down is always a striking line. There is a quatrain he wrote as he rode past the guest house of Yeomju.

No dream under the mandarin-duck quilt, and the night drags on. The cool moon, full of feeling, lights the painted eaves. To have called this place Yeomju was a great mistake. The sights of the whole district are all Muyeom.

King In came to the great seat while still a child, and his mother's elder brother, Duke Joseon, ran the court as he pleased. Choe Sajeon, a physician, moved and talked among men like Ping and Bo, and in the end he made the fortune of Han secure. For this his likeness was painted in the Qilin Pavilion, and he rose all at once to the chief ministers.

At that time Kim Jonjung of the Office of Proclamations drew up the patent and wrote, "When Mang Heluo struck the precious zither the disaster broke out in confusion. When Xia Wuju threw his medicine bag, his mind was set on loyalty and right." People of the day said it fitted the case exactly. The royal favor toward him grew heavier still, and the gifts were counted in the millions.

He had two sons, called Byeon and Yeol. The lord gave them two golden wine jars. When the lord left the world, a concubine he had loved stole one of them. The elder brother was angry and meant to have her whipped, but the younger said:

"This is the concubine our late father loved. It would be right to empty the family property to relieve her, and how much more so over a thing like this. The golden jar I received is still here. I ask you to give it to her and not to torment her."

King In heard of it and said, "He may be called filial and benevolent." At once he granted him a name with the royal brush and called him Hyoin. The great constancy he kept while standing in court can be seen in this.

He once declined the post of attendant at the Gate Office and sat for the examination, wishing to carry out the last charge of his dead father. He did not succeed, and he never stopped grieving over it. His friend Kim Sinyun, the minister, made him a poem in six-word lines.

Choosing the throw of the dice, winning and losing. In the dream of yellow millet, rising and sinking. A hurried hundred years, and how much is it? Why let this wound your heart?

Since the Ya was broken and the Feng was lost, the poets have all held that Du Zimei walked alone. Was it only that his words were set down with precision and strength, gathering up all the flower of heaven and earth? Even over a single bowl of rice he never once forgot his lord. The firm constancy of his loyalty and right was rooted within and bloomed without, so that line after line is such as flowed from the mouths of Hou Ji and Xie. To read him is enough to make a weak man set his will. Clear and glittering is the sound, and the substance, is it jade? That, in the main, is what those words mean.

Yesterday I saw a poem by Chancellor Kim Yeongbu, "Moved by What I Feel."

Of late I hear the neighboring state is close to danger. The time to widen the land and open the borders is now. White hair blows loose, and frost and snow come down. The red heart burns clear, and the spirits know it. That Lian Po could still eat his rice was not without meaning. That Huo Qubing refused a house had its reason too. In silence I have nowhere to tell this feeling, and whenever I meet a jar of wine I get drunk as mud.

His earnest care in worrying over the country grows stronger as he grows older, and stands up bravely to contend in height with Mount Tai and Mount Hua. He is truly to be looked up to.

All his life the lord let the wine carry him and had a wild air, so that even the highest lords and the great men were wary of him. As a boy he dreamed that he wandered inside the palace and came out on the ball court, where several hundred wine jars stood ranked close together, of which only two or three had yet been tipped. He asked about them and was told, "This is the wine that Kim Yeongbu the graduate will drink." The saying about the money of the thirty-six furnaces of Lord Zhang is true indeed.

King In divined and found at the Western Capital the shape of a great revival and a great flowering, and newly opened the Yongeon Pavilion. He toured the west in the phoenix carriage, set out a banquet for his officers, and ordered the academician Yi Jijeo to compose a spoken ode.

Part of it ran, "The emperor comes forth from Zhen and rides upon Qian. This may be called a destiny that answers the time. The king is at Hao and drinks his wine. It is right indeed that he share it with the multitude." And again, "House upon house rejoices together, for they waited for our lord to come and bring them back to life. When the pipe and the flute are first heard, they say our king is good at making music." And again, "That his wandering and his pleasure become a measure for the lords accords already with the old saying of Xia. That he pours out a loyal subject's heart in drinking and eating chimes truly with the song of the men of Zhou."

The pairing was precise and exact, with truly no trace of axe or chisel. Duke Munyeol saw it and sighed, "This is not to be set beside what the court writers of these days produce, who take the weaving of fours and sixes for their craft."

The lord was the son of Gongsu, the chancellor. At eighteen he was chosen at the dragon's head, the highest place, and within days he mounted to the great offices. His face was like a painting, and he did not let his eyes wander. Even with a student newly at his books he sat as though facing an honored guest. His loyal words and his fine counsels were fit to stand as the inside and the outside of the charges of Yi Yin and Fu Yue. He was truly what the ancients called a great minister. To this day the place where he lived is called Jeongdang village.

Once he went on a mission to the Eastern Capital and wrote a poem there in play.

Deep in drink and dull with it, my dawn dream turns over. I did not sleep with the jade one below the curtain. Let the man beside me not laugh that my feeling is thin. I can still compose a piece to the Xi jiang yue.

Kim Yeon, the chancellor, was the son of Sanggi, the state councillor. Young, he was known for his writing, and before he was thirty he took the carriage and went out to the frontier. He traveled together with Meng Chu, an envoy of the Great Liao, and Meng Chu, seeing how young he was, made rather light of him.

They rode out to the open country side by side. The snow had just cleared, and look where they would on all four sides there was nothing to see. Only the hooves of the horses made a sound as they struck the ground. Meng Chu let his sleeve hang, hummed quietly, and then sang out, "The hooves of the horses tread the snow, and a dry thunder stirs." The lord answered him on the instant, "The tails of the banners toss in the wind, and a fierce fire flies." Meng Chu started and said, "This is a talent given by heaven." From then their affection deepened day by day, and they regretted how late they had come to know each other. When the carriage turned back, Meng Chu untied the heaven-piercing rhinoceros horn he wore and gave it to him.

While the lord was in the remonstrance office, everything he set forth was a far-reaching plan for governing the country. At first it seemed roundabout and loose, but the good of it lay a thousand years and more ahead. In the time of King In, when a powerful minister ran the court as he pleased, the lord heard the song of the children and withdrew on the plea of illness. When right rule was restored he was called back and made prime minister. In his going forward and his holding back there was much that was uncanny, and the world could not measure him. All three of his sons rose by brush and ink to the seat of minister, so that people of the day compared them to the Wang and the Xie of Jiangzuo.

Once he went out to take command at Yongman, and there is a poem he showed to his students.

Ten years in the pavilion offices I held the royal word like silk. Today instead I am a servant outside the threshold. In the seat of remonstrance I could not set out an upright argument. On the frontier wall I would at least sweep away the barbarian dust. The hair at my temples whitened early because I worried for the country. The tears I can hardly hold back are for longing after my parents. Deep thanks to the young men of my gate, who send the traveler off with a hundred jars of clear wine.

Kim Jaui, the minister, was upright in the bone and had a rare constancy. Once, when he was contending in skill at the Spring Office, the king dreamed he saw a man pass the examination whose name was Chang (昌). When the paste seal was opened, the lord stood second, and his name was Jeong (晶), so the king was startled and thought it strange.

Standing in court he was firm and outspoken, with the air of a minister who contends with his lord. By nature he loved wine, and when drunk he would rise and dance and break into the Song of the Four Seas, and everything he said in it was the great cord of the dynasty. There was a saying at that time: "Better to meet a fierce tiger than to meet Lord Kim drunk."

When he was about to go out and inspect the region south of the river, the king came out to the hall and warned him:

"Your writing, your will and your constancy put you to no shame beside the men of old. Only in drinking you go too far too often. After three cups, take care to put nothing more to your lips."

Because of this he went the round of all the districts in his charge wide awake and did not drink. On his way he passed a temple in the mountains and called on an old monk he had long known. They took each other's hands and talked over old feelings. When they were to part, the monk bought wine to send him off, and the lord went out of the gate, squatted on a mossy stone, and said:

"When I left the capital the other day there was a word from the court forbidding a servant of the king to drink more than three cups. Bring out the iron bowl you use for your offerings."

He drank three cups and went. The bowl would hold more than a mal. His largeness was all of this kind.

Once he grieved that Chancellor Cheok had been banished to the south, and made a quatrain.

With the bold form of dragon and tiger and bowels of iron and stone, he would have taken loyalty and right and helped his king. It is only that when the birds are gone the bow is put away. It was not that the Marquis of Huaiyin turned his back on the emperor of Han.

Duke Jinnak, whose name was Jahyeon, rose from a house of ministers. Though he left his traces among the caps and sashes of office, he always had thoughts of escape, like the purple haze. When he was young and wandering in the Golden Chamber he followed the diviner Eun Wonchung and asked him quietly where among the streams and the mountains there might be fine ground fit for a hidden life. Lord Eun said, "Above the Yangja River there is one bend of blue mountain. It is truly a place for leaving the world." He heard this and kept it hanging in his heart.

At twenty-seven his office had reached director of the Bureau of Great Music when all at once the grief of drumming on the basin came upon him. He shook out his robe and went far away, entered Cheongpyeong Mountain, put the Munsuwon in repair, and lived there. He came to love the words of Seon more and more, and when a student came to him he would take the man into the quiet room, and they would sit upright all day and forget speech. From time to time he would raise the main point of an old master and weigh it in discussion. By this the law of the mind spread through the Eastern Country, and the two state preceptors Hyejo and Daegam both wandered at his gate.

Then, in a deep and cut-off place within the valley, he made a hermitage called Sigam. It was round like a swan's egg, and there was room only to coil two knees in it. He would sit silent inside it for days on end and still not come out.

His friend Gwak Yeo, who had passed in the same year, was traveling in Gwandong with the staff of office and came to visit him, and gave him a poem.

The hills and waters of Cheongpyeong are like the banks of the Xiang. By chance we meet, and I see an old friend. Thirty years ago we passed together. A thousand li apart we each hid ourselves away. The drifting cloud enters the valley and there is never any business. The bright moon stands over the stream and is not stained by dust. Where the eyes meet and nothing is said for a long while, calm and clear we shine on each other with the old spirit.

The lord answered him.

Warmth presses in on stream and hill and quietly turns it to spring, when of a sudden an immortal's staff comes round to call on a hidden man. That Bo Yi and Shu Qi fled the world was only to keep their nature whole. That Hou Ji and Xie toiled for the state was not for their own sake. At this hour, bearing the royal decree, the jade pendants ring. On what day will the cap be hung up and the dust shaken from the robe? How may we dwell here together and hide, and rear the undying spirit we have had from the first?

King Ye thirsted after his true bearing and called him with decree after decree. He answered the messenger:

"When I first went out of the gate of the capital I swore that I would never tread the capital again. I dare not receive the decree."

In the end he sent up a memorial:

"In the age of Yao and Shun, and as subjects of Yao and Shun, Kui and Long set forth their counsels for the court, while Chao Fu and Xu You held up their will for the hills and the woods. If you rear the bird as a bird should be reared, there will be almost no trouble of bells and drums. If you look at the fish and know the fish, you will let them fulfill the nature of river and lake."

The king knew that he could not be bent and brought in, and on a special visit to the southern capital he summoned him and asked what was essential in cultivating the self and rearing the nature. He answered:

"A man of old said, 'For rearing the nature there is nothing better than to have few desires.' Let Your Majesty only keep this in mind."

The king did not stop sighing and praising, and said:

"His words can be heard but his way cannot be handed on. His body can be seen but his will cannot be bent. He is truly a second to the man of Yingyang."

The king gave him tea and medicine and sent him back to the mountain. When he died his posthumous title was Duke Jinnak. The rest of his traces may be seen in Chancellor Kim's record of the rebuilding.

Gwak Yeo the recluse was an aide to King Ye when the king was still in the crown prince's palace. When the king ascended the throne, Gwak Yeo hung up his cap and went far away. By decree the king gave him one peak of Mount Yakdu east of the walls, and there he opened a villa and named it Dongsanjae. He came and went among the palace buildings in a black kerchief and a crane-feather cloak, and people of the day called him the feathered guest of the Golden Gate.

Once at a banquet within the palace the king gave him a spray of flowers to wear in his hair, and had him send up a poem at once.

Who cut red silk and made a peony? Its fragrant heart is not yet open, for it fears the cold of spring. The powdered ladies of the six palaces all say to one another, what business has a palace flower on the cap of a man of the Way?

Another time he followed the royal carriage to the Jangwon Pavilion. The king climbed the tower and looked out on the evening, and there was an old man of the fields riding an ox home along the stream. At once the king had him compose on the spot.

With the face of a man at peace he rides his ox as he pleases, half wet with the last of the mist as he crosses the head of the ridge. I know there is a house near by at the water's edge. He follows the setting sun along the stream.

Was it only that the bearing of an immortal and the tone of a man of the Way were enough to sway the mind of the ruler? In writing too he was strong and quick beyond his fellows, so that the king's favor to him was of a rare kind, past anything the court officers could reach.

Once the king went out by the north gate with several dozen palace attendants, calling himself a marquis of the royal house, and came to call at Dongsanjae. The recluse happened to be staying in the city and had not come back. The king lingered there three or four times over, made the piece "Where is it hard to forget the wine," wrote it on the wall with the royal brush, and went back. People at the time all said, "The song of the white clouds by the emperor of Han and the phoenix-dancing brush of the emperor of Tang, he holds both of them together. There has been nothing like it, old or new." The words run:

Where is it hard to forget the wine? Coming back from a search for a true man, and not meeting him. On the study window the light shines back, bright. On the jade rug the last ashes lie covered. In the master's room there is no one keeping watch. The immortal's wicker gate stands open all day. The oriole of the garden sings in an old tree. The stork in the courtyard dozes on the blue moss. With whom shall I talk over the taste of the Way? The master has gone and does not come. Deep thought brings a rush of feeling. I turn my head and pace about again. I take up the brush and leave a writing on the wall. I hold the railing and come down the terrace slowly. Everything here helps the singing, and the shapes are many. Wherever I touch, the dust of the world is cut off. The heat of the day is eased under the trees. A warm wind comes into the corner of the hall. At this hour there is not one cup. With what shall I wash away these troublesome thoughts?

The lord answered it:

Where is it hard to forget the wine? When the precious carriage has passed in vain and gone home. At the red gate a small feast was followed, and in the cinnabar stove the cold ashes have fallen. The country drinking broke up only at daybreak. The gate of heaven waits for dawn to open. The royal guard goes back by the path of the Penglai isle. My clogs have dragged the moss of the city of Luo. Under the tree a blue-clad boy says that the Jade Emperor came down through the clouds. The terrapin palace is silent enough. The dragon carriage lingered there long. There is something I mean to write, so I pull out the brush, but there is no one, and I climb the terrace alone. I could not look up at the sun and the moon, and I hate it that I turn instead toward the dust. I scratch my head and stand below the steps. I hold my grief and lean on the corner of the stone. At this hour there is not one cup. How shall a heart of one inch be comforted?

Gyeeung, the man of Mount Taebaek, was the true heir of the state preceptor Daegak. As a boy he stayed in a temple and read his books, and Daegak heard his voice through the wall and said, "This is truly a vessel of the law." He urged that the boy's head be shaved and kept him among his followers. Morning and evening the boy bored in and looked up with all his heart, and he entered deep and far. He carried on from Daegak and spread the great law for more than forty years, so that the lord of ten thousand chariots honored and looked up to him, and he was never away from the royal carriage.

He asked again and again to return to Mount Taebaek. With his own hands he founded the Gakhwa temple and opened wide the giving of the law there, and students gathered from the four quarters like spokes to a hub, never fewer than a thousand in a day. So it was called the Dragon Gate of the Sea of Law.

At that time there was a man called Jiseung at the Heungwang temple, who loved learning. He came to the master's tent, drew up his robe, and asked to be taught further. After a year he was about to return to his mountain, and the master made a poem to send him off.

To love learning must be rare enough today. To forget the body was rare even in old times. When I look at myself, what have I that you should come and lean on me? We shared three winters in a narrow valley, and in the spring wind you go home in a single day. Going and staying are both outside the world. There is no need to wet the robe with tears.

Now the words of one who has gained the Way are easy and unhurried and plain, and yet the sense of them runs deep and far. Even the high, unfettered lines of Chanyue and the clear, graceful lines of Canliao, how could they go beyond this? This is what the ancients meant when they said that when the wind blows on the water it makes a pattern of itself.

Hyeso, the monk of the West Lake, was widely read in the books within the faith and outside it, was better still at poetry, and his brushwork too was fine. He always served the state preceptor Daegak as his master, and was a high disciple. The preceptor urged him to sit for the monks' examination, and he answered:

"Am I a horse of the heavenly stables, that my paces should be tested?"

He always followed the preceptor wherever he was and weighed and discussed writing with him. When the preceptor died he compiled a record of his acts in ten scrolls, and Chancellor Kim gathered from it to make the stone inscription.

He lived at the Gyeonbul temple by the West Lake. His room was quiet and bare, and he kept there only a single blue stone the size of a mat, on which from time to time he would splash ink and let his feeling out. After the chancellor had given back the seals of office he came on a donkey to visit him again and again, and they would talk of the Way until the evening was done.

The king had long heard his name, and had him brought to the chapel within the palace to expound the treasured scripture of the Hwaeom, and gave him a great deal of silver. The master spent all of it on a hundred cakes of sugar and set them out inside and outside where he lived. People asked him why, and he said:

"This is what I have loved all my life. If the trading ships do not come next spring, then how am I to get any?"

Everyone who heard it laughed at his plainness.

In the district of Geumnan there is the Hansong Pavilion. Long ago, when the four immortals wandered there, three thousand of their followers each planted one tree, and to this day the trees are deep green and brush the clouds. Below them is a tea well. Gyeeung the state preceptor, my elder in the Way, left a poem there.

Long ago, whose sons were they who planted three thousand green pines? The bones of those men have rotted away, and the needles of the pines are thick still.

He answered it.

The wandering of the immortals is a thousand years off. Green and green, only the pines are left. There is only the moon at the bottom of the spring, faintly drawing their shapes for one another.

Those who discuss it say, "The master's weaving is well done, but it is not the equal of the piece before it, where the feeling of heaven comes of itself."

Geobi, the old man of Byeongna, talked with me.

"Once, on the wall of a post-house pavilion, I saw a quatrain. 'The autumn sun melts warm, like the sun of spring. / Bamboo leaves and a plantain are mirrored on the white wall. / Do not boast to this gentleman that your leaves are broad. / This gentleman will only laugh that the frost is near.'"

The monk Gwangcheon of the Wangnyun temple also recited a poem of recent days.

To whom shall I tell what the spring idleness has taken? Now and then I hear an oriole and say I have heard it wrong. It is laughable that the feeling of things is as weary as I am. The peony, heavy in the head, puts out the warmth of the wind.

Neither of these two pieces carries the name of its maker. Yet the manner of the words is no different from that of the men of Tang and Song. The two monks wandered in the company of the famous and worthy men of the Eastern Country, so they must have had these from someone. For that reason I set down both of them and wait for one who knows.

The monk Gwangcheon of the Bunhwang school was open and broad and did not keep to small proprieties. Once he went to the chapel within the palace, grew very drunk, sat slumped and dozing with the tears hanging down on his breast, and was caught by the office in charge and driven out in the end.

Jogam heard of it and said:

"A thousand measures make a sage, and a hundred flasks are worthy too, and one may pile up yeast into a fief and still do a true man no harm. How much more when a man of the Buddha's way plays and is free of himself. Can he really be called hemmed in?"

Then he made a verse.

The palm leaf turns over and becomes a cup of bamboo leaf. The flowers of heaven all fall, and the flowers of the eye open. The land of drink is wide and great, and the world of men is narrow. Who knows the old Wanhui, who feigned madness?

Master Wol of the Hwaeom wandered with me when he was young, and called himself Goyang Chwiyong. When he made a poem it had the bone and bearing of Jia Dao.

Yesterday I brought Giji of Seoha to call on him, and at one look they were like old acquaintances. Then Giji said:

"The master has long been praised by Lord Yi. Why must we take each other's hands and discuss our friendship before we can be said to know each other?"

At once, from where he sat, he spread out his brush and gave him this.

Long ago there was Huiqin, a monk who could make poems, and all his wandering was at the gate of the Drunken Old Man. Now Misu is truly a rare scholar, and boasts that at Goyang he has found one Yong. Long I regretted that I had heard the name and not yet seen the man. We meet, I mean to speak, and instead I forget my words. What need to ask about the clear poems and the strong brush? It is enough to say that it was handed down from the first graduate.

Before Hwang Binyeon of Gangha passed the examination, he was reading his books with two or three friends at the Gamak temple in Danju. At that time Kim Sinyun of the Eastern Hall was a noted scholar, but he had got drunk and let out wild words that offended the great favorites of the day, so he went out of the walls on foot and went back to Gamak. He said of himself, "An old soldier is on his way home to his village, and asks for a night's lodging." Binyeon pitied him as old and worn out and allowed it.

All day he stayed under the couch and said not a word. Then he happened to take up the fire tongs and drew letters in the ashes, and the force of them drew the eyes of the whole room. "This old man knows his letters rather well."

Next morning the lord's son Ongi, who had already passed the examination, came looking for him with two or three servants and a jar of wine on their backs. He reached the gate and asked the people there:

"Yesterday my father came out of the gate of the capital and reached this place. Is he here now?"

They answered:

"Only an old soldier came and stayed the night. How should Kim of the Eastern Hall be here?"

Ongi rushed in and bowed below the courtyard, and Binyeon lay flat on the ground and begged pardon in shame. The lord laughed and said:

"How was a poor student to know that Fan Ju was already the chief minister of Qin?"

Together they climbed the northern peak and sat on a stone below the pines and drank together in great delight. He set the guests to make a verse each on the wind in the pines.

It cuts off the whistling of the black gibbon and lifts up the soaring of the white crane.

Binyeon went on.

A guest who hates the noise and leans on his pillow, gathering dry paulownia in fear of the cold.

Jongnyeong went on.

Cool and clear, Guye draws in its breath. With a rush, the terrace of Chu grows great.

One whose name is not known went on.

The crane is cold and can hardly sleep. The monk is settled in his trance, alone as if deaf.

The man of the Eastern Hall too drank hard that evening and then they broke up. Binyeon knocked his head on the ground and asked to be taught, and Sinyun stayed several months, until they had read through the Qian Han shu, and only then went home. The scholars talk of it to this day.

Kim Hwangwon the academician, Yi Jungyak of the Left Office, and Gwak Yeo the recluse were all rare men. In their youth they were friends through their writing, and were called the friendship of spirits.

The two lords once called at the house of the man of the Left Office, and their clear talk ran on so that they did not notice the day was ending. In a moment the moon came out, the clouds opened, and the blue sky was like water, so they climbed the south tower together, drank a little, marked out a rhyme, and each made a couplet.

Yi spoke up at once. "A bold spirit rises unseen from the sword beyond the sky, / and a great plan turns quietly on the counting rods within the tent."

Gwak said. "In the seat is the guest of the three mountains, like ice and snow, / and on the scale a marquis of ten thousand households, light as a grain."

When it came to Hwangwon's turn he said, "Mine is not like what the three of you have made," and then filled his cup and chanted out clearly. "The day darkens, and the voices of birds are hidden in the green trees. / The moon is bright, and the talk of men rises to the high tower."

The two lords went down on their knees without knowing it and said, "Even the men of old, how far off are they?" and so they broke up. My friend Damji is the grandson of the man of the Left Office through his daughter. I once saw the true hand of it, the drunken ink still fresh. It is truly a treasure of the house.

Duke Changhwa, Yi Jayeon, took up the staff of office and went to the Southern Court, and climbed to the Ganlu temple at Runzhou. He loved the beauty of the lake and the hills, and said to the boatman who went with him:

"Look closely at the shape of the hills and the streams and the towers, and store it up whole within your breast. Do not lose a hair of it."

The boatman said, "I have heard your command with care." When the duke came back to court he made a promise with the boatman:

"Of all the things that have shape between heaven and earth, there is none that does not resemble another. That is why there are nine hills alike on the banks of the Xiang, so that travelers are confused, and why, when the He runs in nine bends, the southern sea too has nine bends of water. Seen this way, the shapes of hills and the run of waters give themselves to one another as the faces of men do, and though they differ in a thousand ways and are strange in ten thousand, there must be some among them that are alike. How much more, since our Eastern Country is not far from Mount Penglai, and its hills and streams are clear and lovely ten thousand times over beyond the Central Court. How then should nothing of its beauty come near Jingkou? Take a small boat and a short oar, float along with the ducks and the wild geese, rising and sinking, leave no quiet place unvisited and no far place unsought, and look and gather for me. Take ten years for it, and take care not to hurry."

The boatman said, "Yes." Six times cold and heat went round before he found it at last by the West Lake outside the capital, and he ran to tell the duke:

"I have found it. It can be done between three meals. I am sorry to trouble you, but come once with your own feet and see it."

In the end they climbed to it together, and his joy showed in his brows and his beard.

"The Ganlu temple of the Southern Court is strange and lovely beyond compare, but only the craft of the building and the painting is better there. When it comes to the shape that heaven makes and earth builds of itself, that place is one hair of nine oxen beside this."

At once he gave out gold and silk and made ready timber and tiles, and in the plan of every tower and hall, every pond and terrace, he followed the Ganlu temple of the Central Court exactly. When the work left his hands he wrote the board for it, and that too said Gamno. He had drawn it out with his finger and got the fitness of it, so that a thousand shapes came of themselves without a whip. Later Hyeso the poet-monk began a poem, and Chancellor Kim Busik closed it, and those who heard of it matched it with nearly a thousand pieces more, until they made a great collection.

The Anhwa temple in the north valley of Bongseong was founded by King Ye. King Ye, with his holy and utmost virtue, served the great Song without ever breaking a rite, and the Emperor Xianxiao praised and rewarded him generously, sending besides more books of model writing, famous paintings, and rare and unusual things than could be counted.

Hearing that the king was founding this temple, he sent an envoy on purpose with goods for the hall and an image made for it, wrote the board of the hall himself with the royal brush, and ordered Cai Jing to write the board of the gate. The painting and the craft of the building are the first in the Eastern Country.

From the gate of the temple to the royal flower garden is nearly six or seven li. Red cliffs and blue ridges stretch across and open out at the sides, and a stream runs down along the stone path with a sound like jade pendants ringing. On all four sides there is nothing but pine and cypress piercing the sky, so that even in high summer it is always like early autumn, and those who come and go seem to be inside a painted screen. The world says it is where the immortals of the Yeonha valley live.

Long ago Chancellor Eoni kept a fast and stayed here, and dreamed that he saw the academician Hu Zongdan coming along on a small boat. They met at the Jachwi Gate, and he made a quatrain.

Deep in the clouds of five colors is my home, where mist locks the tower and the sun and the moon are long. I turn my head toward those who were my companions in years past, and now they are hurrying to and fro in a field of dreams.

The temple has a Jachwi Gate.

The Cheonsu temple east of the capital lies a hundred steps from the gate of the walls. Linked peaks rise behind it and a level stream pours out in front. Several hundred wild cinnamon trees line the road and make a shade, so that anyone going up to the capital from the south rests beneath them. Wheels and hooves crowd close there, the songs of the fishermen and the flutes of the woodcutters never stop, and red towers and blue halls show half out of the pines and the firs and the mist. Princes and young lords bring their pearls and kingfisher feathers and lead in the pipes and the singing, and always set their welcomes and their farewells at the gate of this temple.

Long ago, in the time of King Ye, Yi Nyeong of the Bureau of Painting was especially good at hills and water, and he painted this scene and sent it with a merchant of Song. Long afterward the king sought famous paintings from the merchants of Song, and this painting was presented. The king called the painters together and showed it to them, and Yi Nyeong came forward and said, "This is the painting of the south gate of the Cheonsu temple that I made." They turned back the mounting and looked, and what was written there was very full. Only then did they know it for a famous brush.

In the seventh year of King Sin I went out to hold Maengseong, and my son Ada went to take up office at Jindong. My friend Damji said to Ham Jajin:

"The son of Yi of the Okdang is taking up a post as magistrate in a southern district, and his father is far off in Maengseong. It is right that the two of us go and see him off."

Each brought his own son, and they came to the western peak of the Cheonsu temple. They spread brushwood, talked of the parting, and the wine went round eight or nine times. Jajin called his son Beomnang and said it would be fitting to see the traveler off with one line, and the boy said at once, "On the road home the red trees stand up straight and tall." Ada followed it with, "In the old country the blue hills are dot on dot, far away." When the sun went down they broke up sadly.

When Ada reached his post he wrote out the whole of it very fully and sent it a thousand li to Maengseong. I opened the letter and burst out laughing before I knew it. Even the people of the house and the clerks of the district, every one of them, leapt for joy. The look of the hills and streams of the capital, the laughter and the talk of old friends, the cups passing back and forth at the farewell mat, all of it was clear before my eyes. The sadness and the mood of a man far from home melted like snow in hot water, and one hair among those at my temples turned black again. So I have written down the day and the month to keep the joy of it.

The south hall of the Yeongmyeong temple at the Western Capital is the finest view under heaven. It was founded by the venerable Heung. It looks south on the great river, and beyond the river a broad plain runs on so far that no edge of it can be seen. Only at the far eastern rim do distant peaks come and go, there and not there.

Long ago, when King Ye toured the west, the poems he exchanged with his officers at their feasts were many indeed, and there is not one of them that was not cut into metal and stone and set to string and pipe and handed down in the music office. My grandfather Yi O, the state councillor, happened to be in the Okdang and went up there in the royal train. He gave the place the name Bubyeongnyo, and made a poem setting out the whole story of it very fully. The force of the hills and the streams there contends for first place with the Dishu Pavilion of the Central Court, and in beauty it goes beyond it.

Kim Hwangwon the academician halted his staff of office at the Western Capital and climbed up there, and he ordered the clerks to bring out every board of writing left by the worthies of old and of today, and burned them. Leaning on the railing he chanted freely, and by the time the sun went down his voice was bitter, like a gibbon crying at the moon. He got only one couplet.

Along one face of the long wall, water brimming and brimming. At the eastern end of the great plain, hills dot on dot.

His thought dried up and he could set no more words down, so he wept aloud and came down. Some days later he finished a whole poem, and to this day it is called a masterpiece. People of the time said:

"In old days we heard that Song Yu grieved over the air of autumn. Today we have seen Hwangwon weep at the evening sun."

Duke Munchang, Choe Chiwon, had the courtesy name Goun. He entered the Central Court as a tribute student, passed the examination, and served in the headquarters of Gao Pian. At that time the realm was in confusion like clouds, and the dispatches all came from his hand. When he was going home, Gu Yun, who had passed in the same year, made him a piece called Goun and sent him off with it.

Following the wind he left the sea and came to the world of men with the moon for company. He hovers and cannot stay, and lonely he goes east again.

The duke also wrote of himself, "In the year of the layered peaks of the Wu gorge the thread entered China, and in the year of the ranked stars of the Milky Way it came home in brocade to its own country."

He knew beforehand that our Taejo would rise like a dragon, and sent up a letter to make himself known. But his heart for office had turned to ashes, and he divined a hidden life at Mount Gaya. One morning he rose early and went out of the door, and no one knew where he had gone. He left his cap and his shoes among the trees, so he had become an immortal. The monks of the temple prayed for his rest on that same day.

The duke had whiskers like clouds and cheeks like jade, and a white cloud always shaded him. A true likeness of him was left in the reading hall, and it is there to this day. From the reading hall to the Mureung Pavilion at the mouth of the valley is nearly ten li, with red cliffs and blue ridges, pines and old cypresses deep green, and wind and water striking each other so that there is a sound of metal and stone of itself.

The duke once wrote a quatrain there, and the drunken ink is bold and free, so that all who pass point at it and say, "The rock where Lord Choe wrote his poem." The poem runs:

Madly it spouts on the heaped rocks and roars through the folded ridges, so that the speech of men can hardly be told apart a foot away. Always I feared that the noise of right and wrong would reach my ears, and so I made the running water wrap the whole mountain round.

Kim Yusin was a man of Gyerim. His works shine out and are set down in the history of the country. When he was a boy his mother added a strict teaching every day and would not let him keep loose company.

One day he happened to spend the night at the house of a serving girl. His mother faced him and rebuked him:

"I am old already, and night and day I have hoped that you would grow up, set up merit and a name, and bring honor to your king and your parents. And now you keep company with the sons of butchers and wine sellers, and play and make sport in lewd rooms and drinking houses."

She wept aloud and did not stop. There and then, before his mother, he swore that he would never pass that gate again.

One day he was riding home drunk, and the horse followed the old road and came by mistake to the courtesan's house. The woman was glad and resentful at once, and came out weeping to meet him. The lord came to himself, cut down the horse he had ridden, threw away the saddle, and went home. The woman made a song of her resentment and it was handed down.

At the Eastern Capital there is the Cheongwan temple, which is that very house. When Chancellor Yi Gongseung once went to the Eastern Capital, his secretary made a poem.

The temple is named Cheongwan, and there was a bond here long ago. Hearing all at once how it was first built, I am struck with grief. The young lord, full of feeling, wandered under the flowers. The lovely woman, full of resentment, wept before his horse. The red mane had feeling, and knew the road after all. The blue-headed servant, for what fault was he whipped in vain? Only the fineness of a single song remains, and the toad and the hare sleep together and hand it down forever.

Cheongwan was the woman's name.

In the time of King Myeong, the king's uncle Yoil, the monk superintendent, came and went among the palace buildings for more than twenty years without asking anyone's leave. He was always making poems asking to withdraw, and sending them up.

The last dream of the fifth watch I leave at the pine gate, after ten years of pacing low among the purple palaces. In the early tea I hold the thin shadow of oriole and phoenix. In the rare incense I crush fresh the mottling of the partridge. I pity myself, a gaunt crane flying in the red sky, who has long made the cold gibbon resent the green hills. I would take what is left of the daylight and go back to the old retreat, and not leave the white cloud by the rock to its idleness.

The king praised him greatly and said to the master:

"A man of old said, 'Do not wonder that the staff of goosefoot goes home so early. The old mountain has kept one valley of cloud idle for him.' It may be said that he had your rare feeling before you."

Then he matched the poem and bestowed it on him:

The mind-seal of the patriarch works its device, and true emptiness is understood in a single instant. Sitting at the feast, I add a chip of aloeswood to the brazier. Greeting a guest, I tread and break the purple mottling of the moss. Take the scriptures and the treatises and hand them to the black-robed company. Do not think of the old mountain because you go forward or hold back. With the evening chime and the morning incense, be diligent in rite and thought, and let the foolish men of the world find peace and ease.

Looking over the famous monks and fine clerics of old and of today, many have received a piece of writing as a gift from the favor of a king, but there has never been one where the king matched his rhymes on purpose and set out his meaning as warmly and closely as this.

Yesterday I went to the abbot's room of the king's uncle, and he showed me this piece that the king had made. The royal brush flew and moved, and orchid and musk were thick about it, so I straightened my cap, made my face solemn, and knelt to read it. It was like looking up at the sun of heaven from beyond the clouds. The light of good omen and the color of it filled my eyes to overflowing. Truly it is to be looked up to.