The Lower Book破閑集 卷下

In the old customs of Gyerim they chose men of beautiful bearing, adorned them with pearls and kingfisher feathers, and named them hwarang. All the people of the country revered them, and their followers came to more than three thousand. It was like the way Lord Pingyuan, Lord Mengchang, Lord Chunshen, and Lord Xinling kept their retainers. From among them those who stood out and were unlike the crowd were chosen and given office at court. Only the disciples of the four immortals flourished most, and they were able to set up a stele.

When our Taejo arose like a dragon, he held that the remaining customs of the old country had still not died away. In a winter month he set out the great assembly of Palgwan, chose four sons of good families, dressed them in rainbow robes, and had them dance in rows in the courtyard.

Gwak Dongsun, the drafting official, composed the memorial of congratulation in their stead. "Since Fuxi ruled the world as king, none has stood higher than Taejo over the Three Han. Far off on Mount Guye they say there are divine men, and these four sons of Wolseong are truly they." He also wrote, "The peach blossoms on the flowing water have gone far away. Who would say the true traces are hard to find? The old customs of the old house are with us still, and this is truly that heaven has not yet cast us off." And again, "In a courtyard that is not high, they have come to the ranks where the hundred beasts are led out to dance, and all the scholars of Zhou sing the stanza of Xiaozi youzao."

Dongsun was the nephew of the recluse Gwak. In his youth he had a name for talent. At that time the recluse was staying at the Sanhojeong inside the palace. Dongsun went to call on him, and their pure talk ran on quietly until the day grew late and he stayed the night. In the middle of the night the moonlight was like white silk, and the king walked out as far as the Sanhojeong. The recluse had Dongsun come out and bow. The king said, "What man is this?" He answered.

"He is your servant's nephew, so-and-so. For a long time I could not see his face, and now I have been lucky enough to pour out what we felt while apart. When he was about to go home the iron locks had already been let down. It is a capital crime, a capital crime."

The king said, "I too have heard of him for a long while." The recluse offered a toast and made a line on the spot. "The shadow of the moon leans as it seeks the seat of the son of heaven." He ordered Dongsun to carry it on, and he knelt at once and said, "The dewy blossoms in turn wet the robe of the attending servant."

The king praised him greatly and said, "With talent like this, how could even Minghuang have borne to let him go?" That evening he entered the golden gate and served on night duty.

King Ye held Confucian scholars in still greater weight. Every other year he himself examined the worthy and the good, and he first looked over the papers that were handed in, to know their talent. The candidate Go Hyochung was a noted scholar, and he made the poem of the four things without benefit to censure the faults of the king. Even a sage ruler could not empty his heart at this. When the spring examination was opened, he ordered his attendant Im Gyeongcheong to go to the examination seat and put Go Hyochung out before the topics were given. But the academician Ho Jongdan went to the palace, submitted a memorial, and had his offense cleared.

Later he sat for the examination again and handed in his paper to the Spring Office. The first topic on it ran thus.

I send word to the discourse on poetry and rhapsody within this paper. You and I shall part next spring. You will become the thousand-year treasure of the secret pavilion, and I shall become the first man of the blue clouds.

He was chosen as the dragon head indeed, and he soared through the offices of the palace. He was blunt and upright and had the air of a remonstrating minister. Wherever he came, people all pointed at him and said, "That is the man who once made the poem of the four things without benefit."

The scholar Bak Wongae was bright beyond his years and unlike the crowd. At the age of only eleven he wrote a petition and presented it to Choe Yunui, the chief minister, begging that his father be given office. "If there is one man who has not received your bounty, it is my father alone. The one who lets all things find their proper place is truly Your Excellency."

The chancellor read it and suspected that he had borrowed it from another, so he wished to test him face to face.

"Now I am going to drink a bowl of tea. Before I have finished it the boy should make a poem on the peonies in the courtyard, and let hyang and wang be the rhymes."

He answered on the instant.

The peony keeps the color of spring and breathes a rare fragrance before the hall. If the tree peony were standing beside it, it would be ashamed to be king of the hundred flowers.

The chancellor was amazed and did not stop marveling. "He will surely be the leader of the coming generation."

When he grew up he went to the samma examination. The topic given out was that the state is a vessel of the utmost fairness, and he wrote, "Yao and Shun could hardly hand it to their sons, and Shang and Zhou got it by merit." His use of old matter was as fine and subtle as this. He passed indeed, and became a man of note in his time.

When poets make poems, using much old matter is called marking the ledger of ghosts. Li Shangyin used his matter in a steep and out-of-the-way manner and was called the Xikun style. These are both a sickness of writing. Lately Su Shi and Huang Tingjian have risen up, and though they follow and honor that method, their making of phrases is finer still, with not the least trace of the axe and the chisel. It may be said that they came out of the indigo and are bluer than the indigo.

Lines of Dongpo such as "I watch the unicorn and the whale roam the boundless waste, and I remember how once I picked lice and talked of grief and hardship," and "Through the long night I think of home, but where is it? In my last years I know what you feel," have a method like something the creative power gave birth to. Those who read them do not know what matter was used.

Shangu wrote, "There is little savor in the words, and nothing of the vulgar coin in them. Ice and snow look at each other, and only this gentleman is here." He also wrote, "With the eye I watch the feelings of men, and they are like the game of gewu. With the heart I know the affairs of the world, and they are like three in the morning." There is much of this kind.

My friend Giji too has caught that subtlety. Lines such as "The years and months have startled me again and again, and the shoulder of the sheep is done. Wind and poetry meet once more, and the sky of the crane is cold," and "Within the belly I knew early that the spirit was full. In the breast no meanness rises at all," have all spread through the mouths of men. They truly need not be ashamed before the men of old.

When I was a boy I climbed Mount Cheonma north of the capital, searching out every strange thing and plucking every rare one, and leaving nothing behind. On the wall of a lonely temple I saw a poem that had been left there.

Who named it the ridge of Cheonma? It slights the sky, and the piled green floats. From heaven it is scarcely a handspan. For how many autumns has it hung the moon? The road is steep, and the gibbon lets down its arm. The poem leans, and the crane tilts its head.

The one line below had been rubbed away and could not be read, and there was no name of the maker. Yet this must have been written by one who fled the world and nursed the Way among the rocks and valleys, and his words were pure, and so it was.

In the register of music of Namju there was a courtesan whose beauty and art were both surpassing. There was a county magistrate, whose name is forgotten, and his affection for her was very deep. When his term was up and he was about to go back, he suddenly grew very drunk and said to those beside him.

"If I go even a few steps out of this county, she will at once belong to another."

Then with a wax torch he burned both her cheeks until no sound flesh was left.

Later Jeong Seupmyeong of Hyeongyang passed that way holding the tally of office. He saw the courtesan and could not stop grieving. He drew out two sheets of cloud-blue paper, wrote a quatrain with his own hand, and gave it to her.

Among the hundred flowers, a face of quiet grace was struck of a sudden by a wild wind, and the red was taken away. The marrow of the otter cannot heal the cheek of jade. The young lords of Wuling will grieve without end.

Then he charged her.

"If an envoy comes this way, you should bring out this poem and show it to him."

The courtesan carefully followed his teaching, and everyone who saw it gave her more help. He had wished Lord Hyeongyang to hear of it, and through that she gained the benefit, and her wealth was twice what it had been at first.

Lord Hwang Sunik had rare talent. In his youth he studied at the Taehak, and when he fell ill with a parched mouth he asked another man for Jian tea, and he thanked him with a petition.

"When Adviser Meng sent tea to Lu Tong, a fresh wind rose lightly under both his arms. When Chancellor Wang gave tea to Pingfu, a round green moon fell from the ninth heaven."

He also answered another man's poem on a crane. "It treads and breaks the moss of the path, and its pine legs are strong. It whirls the moon of the courtyard in its dance, and its snow robe is cool." His excellence and his freedom were like this, and the scholars all respected him and feared him.

He used to call on Kim Jonjung of the Privy Council. It happened that someone presented a pine fungus, and the chancellor asked him to make a poem on it. He wrote it where he stood.

Last night my forefinger moved, and this morning I taste a rare savor. It was never the stuff of a low mound, and it still keeps the fragrance of the pine-root fungus (茯苓).

He loved wine and kept little guard on himself, so he lingered low in office and for a long time could not be moved up. Then one evening, when the day was cold, he drank hard and fell asleep leaning on his armrest. His neighbor saw in a dream that the master had spread a white canopy and was going back to his old home on Mount Baekdu. At dawn he went to look for him, and all was already still. The world called him the spirit of Baekdu.

Seoha Giji grew weary of wandering and lodged in Seongsangun. The deputy of the county had long heard his name and sent a courtesan to attend his pillow, but late in the night she fled home. Giji was cast down and made a poem.

I climbed the tower and was no companion for the flute. I played with the moon and became for nothing an immortal pounding herbs. I cannot lay hold of the stern orders of the magistrate, and for nothing I blame the ill bond of a stranger guest.

His use of old matter was finer still. This is what the men of old called striking iron and joining the seam so that no trace is left.

Baegunja Sinjun hung up his cap and went from Sinho to hide at his mountain villa in Gongju. The governor of the county had sent his son to study with him for several years. When the son went to the capital for the examination, he sent him off with a quatrain.

The lord of Xinling led his picked troops and went far to Handan and set up a great name. All the heroes of the world followed him as their rule. Pity the old Hou Ying, who scattered his tears.

My forebears carried on writing one after another for generations, and the red paper has been handed down now for eight leaves. I, with no talent, happened to stand at the head of many scholars. My eldest son Jeong was fourth, the next, Yang, was third, and the next, On, was second. Though they showed head and horn boldly and their grades in the examination were high, none has yet stood out in the first place and gained the same rank as his father. Wolsa of Goyang made a poem to congratulate them.

Three sons string their pearls and carry on their father's manner. Four branches of the immortal cassia are in one house. Year after year they have taken the golden roll, yet still they avoid the dragon head and yield it to the old man.

About ten li west of the capital there is a slow and quiet current, clear and green to the bottom. Far peaks and distant ridges reach up together to the sky. It is truly no different from the fine air of Xixing that is spoken of in the collections of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian.

The scholar No Yeongsu had talent and tone. Once at dusk he floated a leaf of a boat and went up against the current, meaning to lodge at a temple by the lake. In midstream he gave a long whistle, as though something had come to him from far off. "The wind blows bleak, and the water of the Yi is cold. In a lonely boat I go alone." He let his voice go and chanted it, and he grieved that there was no one to take it up.

All at once, from among the reeds where the mist hung thick, a voice answered him on the instant. "The haze sinks deep, and the sky of Chu is wide. Traveler, where are you going?"

Lord No heard it and was startled and could not steady himself. He said, "No one lives anywhere near. This must be an immortal." He stopped his oar and could not go on. The night drew toward midnight, and he looked all about and heard no human voice. There were only the last stars and the waning moon casting their shadows upside down on the frosty waves, and so at last he went back.

The next day the word ran loudly through the capital that a heavenly immortal had come down to the west lake. A month later he heard that it was Yu Su, a graduate of the examination, who had been lodging on a fishing boat.

Lord Bak Gongseup lived in poverty and loved wine. When guests came he had nothing to give them to drink, so he asked the monk of Yeongtongsa for wine. The monk filled a round-bellied mountain jar with spring water, sealed it and bound it very tightly, and sent it.

Lord Bak looked at it first and said with delight.

"This vessel will hold about two mal. Long ago the prince of Chen feasted at Pingle with a mal of wine worth ten thousand, and Du Zimei too said, 'We must go and drink a mal together, and I happen to have three hundred green coppers.' Now we two have gained good wine without spending a coin. If each of us drinks a mal, our merry mood will not fall short of the men of old."

When he opened it, it was water. He was sorry that his eye had not reached far and that he had fallen into the old barbarian's trick, and he made a poem and sent it to him.

A guest came and called on me, and in my purse a single coin is short. I thought it would be the wine of Lushan, and for nothing I got the spring of Huishan. It is a stone in the wood that looks like a tiger. It is a bow on the wall that looks like a snake. Even at the butcher's gate a man chews wide. How much more, facing the wine jar!

The monk saw the poem and repaid him with good wine.

The academician Paeng Jojeok had a craving for books. His thatched roof was a few rafters wide and the wind and rain came at it from every side, but though his firewood cost as much as cassia and his rice as much as jade he was always at ease. When he made a piece of writing there was always a root and a stem to it, so that those who read him came up against hard passages.

In the last years of King Ui, Chancellor Yi Gwangjin was modest and respectful and careful, and hardship did not reach him. While the lord was in the Yunwon he composed an edict. "He has tasted the steep, the blocked, the hard, and the toilsome to the full, and yet he said that it was perilous. He gained it by warmth, goodness, respect, and thrift, and in the end there is no fault."

At the beginning of King Myeong's reign Han Eonguk of the Jongbaek led the scholars of the new roll to call on their examination master, Chancellor Choe, and made a poem to thank him. The lord answered his poem and set at the head of it these words. "A gentleman among men has followed a gentleman and has gained men of brilliance. Disciples under a disciple set forth their thanks together." He also wrote, "A lion within the lion's cave, and the roar is one sound. A cassia branch under the cassia grove, and there is no second scent." His strangeness and his steepness were like this.

In his later years he took still more delight in the inner scriptures. With Janggwan, a monk of the Hwaeom school, he studied the contemplation of the dharma realm, and he made a hundred rhymes to thank him. The world calls it the Bodhisattva Hymn of Jojeok.

The academician Kim Hwangwon was appointed to the office of remonstrance and offered words like medicine and stone many times, but he could not gain the strength to turn heaven around, and he went out to keep Seongsan. His road led out by the Bunhaeng station. It happened that Yi Jae of the Cheonwon was coming back to court from the southern country, and they met by chance at this station, so he gave him a poem.

How should there be no poem on the tower of Bunhaeng? I leave it for the royal envoy and send with it what I long for. The reeds are bleak in the land of autumn waters. The rivers and hills are far off in the hour of the setting sun. I do not see the men of old, and now I sigh for nothing. What is past is hard to overtake, and I only grieve alone. Who would believe that a guest sent down to Changsha is low in office and old in years, with the hair at his temples grown thin?

The officials all answered it in turn, almost a hundred pieces, and they named it the Bunhaengjip. The academician Bak Seungchung wrote the preface, and Lord Daewon, the royal younger brother, cut it on blocks and handed it down.

All his life, whenever the lord made a poem, he always used the two words for the setting sun. Chancellor Kim Buui wrote this in his epitaph and took it as a sign that he would rise late to the pure and important offices.

Autumn, the seventh month, at the thatched hall. Rain on the paulownia, the third watch of the night. The guest leaning on his pillow has no dream. Beyond the window the insects have their voices. On the low sedge the scattered drops turn over. On the cold leaves the last clearness is sprinkled. Because a quiet mood is in me, I know what you feel tonight.

This was made by the academician In Bun. The name of the academician thundered through Haedong, and it truly came from this piece.

Long ago, when I served as an aide in Gyeyangbu, one day I rowed a boat from Gongamhyeon to the south lake of Haengju. I saw a broken bank like a melon, with eight or nine pines and firs standing thick beside it, and a leftover wall and a fallen bank still there. Everyone who passed pointed at it and said, "This is the old site of Lord In's thatched hall."

I brought my boat to shore and could not leave. I walked to and fro, gave a long whistle, and thought of the man. Then I found a small path and climbed the south tower of Sohwasa, and I saw that there was a poem on the wall. The moss was dark and dim, and the traces of the ink were barely left. I came close and looked, and it was written by Lord In.

The plantain sounds beyond the blind, and I know the mountain rain. A sail comes out at the head of the peak, and I see the sea wind.

It may be said that under a great name there is no empty scholar.

Gaegol is a famous mountain of Gwandong. Not one of its peaks or valleys is anything but stone, and from afar it looks as if ink had been splashed. Those who dwell on the rocks must all fill the cracks with soil brought from elsewhere before they can plant melons and fruit to eat.

Jeon Chiyu of the Okdang passed this mountain holding the tally of office, and he wrote at once.

The grass and trees grow small, like the hair on a bald head. The mist and the glow are half rolled up, like a robe with the shoulder bared. Gaegol stands sheer and alone, solitary and clean. It must be laughing at the mountain of flesh, so wholly and grossly fat.

The Donggwan is Mount Bongnae, and the Okdang is called the head of the turtle, and both are offices of immortals. Under the old rule of this dynasty, even the son of heaven could not raise men there or put them out at his own will. If there was a vacancy, the scholars of the forbidden offices had to recommend a man and bring him forward before he was used. Unless a man had the praise of the three abundances and the talent of seven paces, the world all called him unfit, and he could not escape the jeer of bloodied fingers and a sweating face.

In King Ye's time Jeong Seupmyeong, a poor scholar of Gangnam, held rare talent and a great capacity, but he had no ford by which to cross into the world. Once he made a poem on the pink.

The world loves the red of the tree peony and plants it until the courtyard is full. Who knows that in the rough grass there are clumps of good flowers too? Their color soaks into the moon of the village pond. Their scent is carried on the wind in the trees of the ridge. The place is out of the way and young lords are few, so their lovely form belongs to the old man of the fields.

At that time there was a chief gatekeeper who recited this poem and brought it to the king's hearing. The king said, "If it had not been for the keeper of the dogs, how should I have known that Xiangru was still alive?" He had him placed at once in the Okdang.

At the beginning of King Ui's reign the worthy and good Hwangbo Tak went to the examination ten times and was chosen in a high grade. It happened that the king was roaming in the Sangnim and enjoying the peonies, and at last he made a piece. None of his attendants could carry it on. The worthy scholar too presented a piece.

Who says the flowers have no master? The dragon face comes near them day by day. They too must be meeting the early summer, and alone they see off what is left of the spring. Their noon sleep is woken by the blowing wind. Their dawn toilet is washed new by the rain. Ladies of the palace, do not be jealous of them. They are like you, and in the end they are not real.

The king praised it greatly. Afterward the board of selection drew up names to fill posts in the halls and presented them. The king looked at the surnames and the names and said, "Is this not the man who once presented a poem on the peony?" He marked him at once with the black brush and placed him in the Donggwan.

Lord Jeong later entered the Chuaek and held the place of throat and tongue. He received the last command and aided his lord, and he was blunt and upright with the air of a true servant of the king. Lord Hwangbo too had charge of the royal edicts and went in and out of the pavilion offices for more than ten years.

Ah, the meeting of wind and cloud the men of old called a thing of a thousand years. Now, looking at these two lords, they were known by a single piece alone. They did not trouble dreams and divination, and they came together of themselves. How should the meeting of a bright ruler and a good servant be by chance?

Baegunja cast off the cap of a scholar and studied the teaching of the Buddha. He hung a bag at his waist and roamed all the famous mountains. On the road he heard an oriole and was moved, and he made a quatrain.

It boasts of itself, for the yellow beak and the yellow coat are fine. It ought to be singing toward red walls and green trees. What business has it, in a rough village and a lonely place, to send two or three notes now and then across the wood?

When my friend Giji had lost his hopes and was roaming in Gangnam, he heard an oriole and made a poem too.

At the farmhouse the sunlight ripens, and the barley is ready to cut. In the green trees I first hear the oriole. As if it knew the guest under the flowers of Luoyang, it rolls its notes a hundred times and has never once stopped.

From old times until now, poets have lodged their meaning in things, and it is often like this. What the two lords made was at the first a promise made with a thing, yet it pours out like spun thread, sad and grieving, as though it came from the mouth of one man. Having talent and not being used, drifting on the current, wandering a whole life as a stranger and pressed on every side, all of it shows plainly within a few words. What is said, that poetry has its source in the heart, is true indeed.

The brushwork of Kim Saeng of Gyerim was strange and subtle, beyond what the men of Jin and Wei could look up to. In this dynasty only the state preceptor Daegam and the academician Hong Gwan won that name. All the plaques of the treasure halls and the flower towers, and the inscriptions and admonitions on screens and curtains, are from the brushes of these two lords.

When Duke Jinnak of Cheongpyeong died, the monk Hyeso of the West Lake composed the funeral text and the state preceptor wrote it out. It was cut on stone with still greater care and handed down, and the world calls it the three perfections. It is truly beyond the reach of men like Choe and Yang, who are rich in flesh and brittle in bone. There was one who judged it and said, "He drew out iron for chopsticks and broke the mountain for bone. The force could overturn a carriage shaft, and the sharpness could pierce a document."

A man of Song who wanted the state preceptor's hand brought fine paper and subtle ink. He had the academician Gwon Jeok make two quatrains, and they were written out and attached to it.

The writing of Su Shi was heard of beyond the sea, and the son of heaven of the Song court burned his works. Writing can be made into ashes, but how shall a towering and mighty name be burned?

The other piece has been lost.

My cousin Yugyeong, the minister, was the son of a chancellor's house. In his youth he called himself a man of elegance, and those who went about with him felt as though they were walking on a mountain of jade. Once, deep in wine, he went into the Sangchunjeong and chanted and admired the tree peonies. Yi Yangsil of the Privy Council saw him from beside him and loved his air, so he gave him a poem.

One piece of the moon of Longxi has flown here and shines on the walls of Luo. When we parted it was like a long rain. Where we meet it is like a new clearing.

The rhymes are many and are not all set down here.

Long ago Shangu discussed poetry and said, "To keep the meaning of the men of old unchanged and to make its words anew is called changing the bones. To take the pattern of the meaning of the men of old and give it a shape is called stealing the womb." Though this is as far from those who flay the living and swallow them whole as heaven is from an abyss, still it does not escape plundering and quiet theft made into a craft. How should it be the subtlety of what is called bringing out a new meaning where the men of old never reached?

When I got this poem I said, "This is a line in which a man of old caught his meaning." Yesterday, at the Ssangmyeongjae, I was listening to Yi of the Privy Council discuss poetry, and the talk came around to this poem. Chancellor Yi Junchang changed countenance sadly and said, "This is a poem my late father gave to so-and-so." I was amazed and could not stop marveling, and I said to the guests at the mat.

"If this poem were bound into the collection of Xiao Du, who would know that it was not his?"

The stone drums are in the shrine of Confucius at Qiyang. From Zhou to Tang is nearly two thousand years, and there is truly nothing handed down of them in what the Odes and the Documents transmit, or among the many histories and the hundred masters. Moreover Wei Yingwu and Han Yu were both men of wide learning in old things. On what ground did they say at once that these were the drums of King Xuan of Zhou, set it out in verse, and split it open and explain it without remainder? Ouyangzi too said that there were three doubts in it.

Yesterday in my study I happened to read their writings, and something in them met my heart. I have chanted out twenty rhymes and wait for the gentlemen of later ages.

Wooden clogs were handed down and became a treasure for ten thousand ages. The classics in the wall set the tongues of many scholars beating too. The towering stone drums have been called strange from of old. How much more, since they are things of the master's dark hall. When King Xuan of Zhou opened the restoration long ago, Fangshu and Shaohu swept on and swung the axes. Three thousand war chariots were even, as though in flight. In the north they struck the Xianyun, in the south they bridled Yue. The borders were widened and the ground of Wen and Wu was won back. Such a flourishing work should be spread on the zither and the lute. The troops were gathered in, and loud they sang the Laiqi. Care for small things brought the Jiri to be set forth as well. One should think of the toil of the generals of that day. For how many years did nits and lice breed in the scabbards? They swore by mountain and river, and it could not be lost. Their forms were drawn on the whitened wall, and that has not faded either. How is that like the moon axe falling on the roots of the cloud and strange tadpole letters cutting in their merit? Its words are plain and spare and simple, and its deep sense should have been set among the airs and the odes. Why did the officer of poetry see them and not gather them? Beside the blue sea he left the bright moon behind. Alas, more than a thousand years have gone since Zhou. The rain has beaten them and the wind has hurried them, and much is broken and gapped. One line of some ten letters is left, scraps of the scales of snake and dragon, and who would cherish them now? "My chariots are in order, and my horses are with them." These words are bound up with the Odes themselves. Lord Han was truly deep in poetry as well, and at one reading he knew the great deeds of King Xuan of Zhou. He brought wind and cloud into his brush and drove his mighty words. He split them open and would not leave one hair behind. Had it not been so, this writing would have turned to cold ash. How could it have stood in a row beside the highest things? It is as though in a dream I roamed the halls of heaven and heard for a moment all the pure and lofty music of Juntian. Now I chant and would fill it out, but the tip of my brush is blunt and hard to weave with. Though I wet my finger and know the taste of the nine cauldrons, how shall a flying bird make up one lost letter?

Among the affairs of the world, the one thing whose height and depth are not set by rank or poverty or wealth is writing alone. The making of writing is like the sun and the moon hung in the sky, or like cloud and mist gathering and scattering in the great void. No one who has eyes fails to see it, and it cannot be covered over. So a scholar in hemp and coarse cloth is enough to cast his light on the rainbow, while the rank of Zhao Meng, with power enough to enrich a state and fatten a house, has nothing to be spoken of when it comes to writing.

From this it may be said that writing has a fixed price of its own, and wealth cannot lessen it. So Ouyang Yongshu said, "If later ages were truly not fair, there would be no sages or worthies to this day."

Bogyang Sejae is a scholar of talent. He went to the examinations many times and did not pass. Once he fell ill in the eyes and made a poem.

Old age and sickness follow each other, and all the year through I have one hempen coat. Phantom flowers screen my sight again and again, and the pupils of my eyes have little light. I dread to look at the letters before the lamp. I am ashamed to see the brightness after snow. I shall wait and watch the golden roll come to an end, and then close my eyes and sit and forget the workings of the world.

He married three times, and each time he cast her off and went. He had no son, and no ground to set an awl in, and his bowl and his gourd were not kept filled. At fifty he passed once, and he died a stranger in the eastern capital. As for his writing, how should it be thrown away because he was poor and stumbled?

It is long since the world took its scholars by examination. From Han and Wei down, through the six dynasties to Tang and Song, it was at its height, and this dynasty too has followed that method and held the comparison once in three years. Over thousands of years, above and below, those who picked up the blue cord and the purple cord by writing cannot all be recorded. Yet very few of those who stood at the head of many scholars later rose to the seat of a great minister.

Writing is gained from the nature that heaven gives, while office and salary are what men hold. If a man seeks them by the Way, it may be called easy. Yet heaven and earth do not let any creature keep all beauty to itself. So what has horns is without upper teeth, what has wings is given two feet, a famous flower bears no fruit, and a lovely cloud scatters easily. With men it is the same. When rare talent and rich art are given, merit and fame are not given in exchange. The principle runs so.

Therefore from Confucius, Mencius, Xunzi, and Yang Xiong down to Han Yu, Liu Zongyuan, Li Bai, and Du Fu, though their writing and the praise of their virtue were enough to shake the ages, their place never rose to minister or chancellor. To tread the seat of the highest office after the high choice of the dragon head is truly what the men of old called riding a crane at Yangzhou. How can it be had often?

In this dynasty eighteen men have entered the chancellorship as top graduate. Now Choe Hongyun and Geum Geugui have reached the yellow gate one after another, and Lord Kim Gunsu, the vice-minister, and I roam the Gowon together. Besides these, fifteen more stand in the pure and splendid offices. How flourishing it is!

In the sixth year since the present king came to the throne, a gisa year, Lord Kim went out to keep Namju. The lords gathered at Hoeri to see him off, and the world called it the gathering of the dragon heads. To look at it was like watching men rise as immortals. I made a piece to record it.

The dragon flies to the place of nine and five, and below him a crowd of dragons has gathered. They swallowed the earth and held the bright moon pearl, and they leapt up on the road of the blue clouds. They have climbed the gate of Li Ying already, and the rain of the Yin chancellor should pour down. Only the head of Hua Xin is held dear. What is the use of counting waist and tail?

My words are rough and clumsy, but I hope they may let later ages know how richly this dynasty gained men. Even the days of Yao and Shun could not have matched it.

The commentary says, "In the south it becomes a tangerine, and in the north it becomes a thorn orange." Grass and trees cannot fulfill their nature except in their own soil.

Yesterday I came out of the Geumgyu and reached the royal flower garden. I saw a tangerine tree a fathom high with a great many fruits on it. I asked the clerk of the garden, and he said, "A man of Namju presented it. Every morning its roots are soaked with salt water, and so it has grown thick and full."

Ah, grass and trees are truly things without knowledge, and yet by the strength of watering and tending they could come to this. How much more when a ruler uses men. Let him not weigh far or near, distant or close, but bind them with kindness and love and nourish them with salary and rank. Then who would not give his whole loyalty and his whole sincerity to help the state? So I have written twelve rhymes, and I hope that those who gather poems may raise even a mote of it to the royal eye.

Who took the seed of a hot country and moved it to plant beside the palace? It slipped its body free of the fevered sea and set its ground close to the palace wall. The jade is lean, and the clump has many thorns. The cloud is thick, and the leaves have barbs. The spring blossom is all touched with white. The autumn fruit slowly holds its yellow. The wide dew gathers and becomes its hollows. Raw silk is woven, and the gourd is split. The picking should trouble white hands. The ripening must wait for the clear frost. It breathes out mist and wets the sleeve. A flying spring soaks the lungs and the bowels. Though it has passed the far reach of the Huai, the fragrance of Dongting is not less. Its savor holds the world of the immortals. Its news is cut off from its old home. Though it is said that this is not the nature of the soil, it is only because it has received the light of kindness. It is ashamed to stand level with a thousand slaves, and it takes in only the hiding of the four white heads. Look, you, at the old man on the bridge, who left Chu and helped Gaohuang.

Giji kept away from the world in Gangnam for more than ten years. He came back to the capital with his sick wife and had no ground to set an awl in. He happened to roam into a lonely temple, where he sat upright in his kerchief and gave a long whistle. A monk asked him.

"What manner of man are you, to let your pride go like this?"

He wrote twenty-eight letters at once.

Early I moved the imperial capital with my writing. Between heaven and earth I am one old student. Only now do I first taste the savor of the gate of emptiness. In the whole temple no one knows my surname or my name.

The academician Baek Gwangsin had charge of the examination rolls. When the locks were opened, the scholars of the new roll set out a feast together and prayed for his long life and his good fortune. Then they called on the academician at the Oksunjeong and set out a small drinking party, and he showed them a quatrain.

Long life and early death are received from heaven from the first. Prayer cannot add another year. Last night, sleeping drunk, I had a rare dream. I know it was your gathered sincerity that moved it so.

Long ago the great sage Wonhyo mingled his traces among the butchers and the wine sellers. He used to stroke and play with a bent-necked gourd, singing and dancing in the market, and he named it muae. After this, men who loved such things hung golden bells above it and let colored silk down below it for ornament, and they struck it, and their going forward and back all kept to the measure. Then they took verses from the sutras and the treatises and called them the muae songs. Even the old men of the fields copied it and made a game of it.

Muae Jiguk once wrote, "This thing has long been used by being of no use, and the men of old named it by having no name."

Lately the mountain man Gwanhyu made a verse. "Waving the two sleeves is the way of cutting off the two hindrances. Raising the foot three times is the way of crossing the three worlds." Both compared it to the true principle.

I too saw that dance and made a praise of it. "Its belly is like an autumn cicada, and its neck is like a summer turtle. Its bend can follow a man, and its emptiness can hold a thing. Let it not be seen blocked by close-set stone, and let it not be laughed at by the mallow and the jar. Han Xiangzi hid a world in it, and old Zhuang floated it on the rivers and lakes. Who gave it its name? The layman Soseong. Who made its praise? The camel Yi of Longxi."

When I was eight or nine I learned to read under an old scholar. Once he taught me to read a fine line of the men of old. "The flower laughs before the railing, but its voice is not heard. The bird cries under the wood, but its tears are hard to see." I said, "It is still not equal to 'The willow frowns outside the gate, and its meaning is hard to know.'" The words were very apt and both word and sense were subtle, and the old scholar was startled.

King Ui ordered the five circuits and the two borders, east and west, to send out clerks by division. They were to copy down all the poems written at the lodges and the post stations and bring them to the royal store, and to look into the customs of the people and what was good and bad for the people and their goods. From these the famous pieces and the fine lines were chosen and bound and presented, and it was made the Siseon.

A poor scholar had written on the wall of a station.

All day I bake my back and plow, and I have not one mal of millet. The man who sits instead in the council hall eats grain to ten thousand seom.

Kim Sinyun, the minister, went out to take command of the camp at Yongman, and he too made a poem.

Cutting the people to please those above has long been the custom, and the whole country runs on and follows falsely, every one. Heavy salary and high office may well be longed for, but the blue sky and the white sun are truly hard to cheat. If the sickness of the king of Qi could be healed, how should I shrink from being boiled or minced? I send word to my friends. Do not laugh at me. To be upright and not well off is what a man is.

At this time the clerks copied these two pieces and presented them. The king was reading the poems, and when he came sadly to this he was silent for a long while, and those about him were all afraid, not knowing what would come. In autumn he ordered the lord to move his command to the eastern march, and the next year to go back to the camp at Yongman. He received the command to hold the standard three times, and few among the court officers could match him.

Seodo is where old Goguryeo had its capital. It draws the mountains and the river about it like a belt, and its air is fine and rare, so from of old many strange men and rare scholars have come out of it.

In King Ye's time there was a man of the surname Jeong whose talent was outstanding, but his name is forgotten. While his hair still hung loose he made a poem to send off a friend.

The rain has cleared on the long bank, and the grass is thick with color. I send you off a thousand li, and a sad song stirs. When will the water of the Daedonggang run dry? The tears of parting are added to the waves year after year.

He made another poem.

The peach and the plum say nothing, yet the butterfly walks about them of itself. The paulownia is bare and cool, and the phoenix comes and bears itself well. Even things without feeling draw things that have feeling. How much more should men be close to one another. You came to this town from a far country, and that we met without appointment is a good bond. In the seventh month and the eighth the weather is cool, and we have shared quilt and pillow not ten days yet. If I have held the glue and lacquer faith of Chen Zhong and Lei Yi, do you now throw me off like a worn-out mat? My parents are living, so I cannot roam far. I would follow, and I cannot, and my heart is far away. In the swallow's nest before the eaves there are male and female. On the pond the mandarin ducks float in a pair. Who will drive these birds to me and let me loose the sorrow of parting?

Afterward he went up to the capital, was chosen in a high grade, and went in and out of the offices of state. He was blunt and upright, with the air of a remonstrating minister of old. Once, attending the king on a progress to the Jangwon Pavilion, he wrote a poem.

The wind sends the traveler's sail, and the clouds are flake on flake. The dew gathers on the palace tiles, and the jade scales glitter. Among the green willows the gates are shut on eight or nine houses. Under the bright moon two or three lean on the tower.

His words are wind-blown and out of the dust, and all of them are like this.

He composed the funeral text for Master Jinjeong of the Dongsanjae, and the king also had him write the record of the Dongsanjae. He made a memorial and said, "On the back of the crane he rose to the true and rode the white cloud into the far distance. At the dragon head he recorded the matter and opened the earnest words of the purple edict." He also said, "His years passed seventy, and he did not leave the company of middle life. His merit filled three thousand, and he must have received the summons of the highest purity." And again, "He has gone in and out of the master's gate, and it is long since he came. How much more, facing and proclaiming the command of the son of heaven, has he nothing to decline." To this day all of these are on everyone's lips.

Suong of Gyerim, of the Jami, was lofty and outstanding in his writing and walked alone in his time. He had by nature an eye for judging men.

Once he went out to inspect Namju and came to Wansan, where he saw a petty clerk named Choe Gu. His face was like iron, stern and cold, and he was silent and slow of speech, but he had the frame and the capacity to go far. He took him to the capital and reared him like his own son, teaching him the writings and the histories and the rules of composition, and he came to a shining growth, so that his words and his brush were both strong. When he came of age he sat for the examination and entered the third grade. He roamed in the Seokgeo and entered the Geumma. He was always blunt and upright and did not spare himself, wishing to follow the needs of the state.

Once he answered a friend's poem on the willow. "The brows of Xi Shi are long, as though worked with kohl. The waist of Xiaoman is slender and cannot bear its charm." He also wrote, "The tree peony not yet open leans on the wall and peeps. Song Yu across the wall stirs up Xiangru." His flowing and lovely words were all of this kind.

The scholar Seo Munwon and Lord Dan Dondonrye were fond of each other from childhood, and both were sons of Confucian houses. Their talent and their years were between elder and younger brother, and that is all. They gave and answered many pieces to each other. Seo made a poem.

"Lord Gwon answered my piece, but three or four couplets were stripped away and lost. What words were in them? When I think of it I am sad for nothing. It is like the sixteenth night of mid-autumn, when the full moon is one part worn and its light is the most to be pitied. It is like Taizhen when she had just finished her bath at the hot spring, her side hair loose and her hairpin aslant, her heavy powder a little worn, and her form lovely beyond measure still. Line after line rings on the paper and moves, and I fear they may fly away and become cloud and mist. If it is not so, then he knew that I have long been a stranger and am easily moved and hurt, and so he kept the perilous words and the bitter words from being fully handed on."

What is received from what heaven gives and is had from birth cannot be shifted by things. So Zhongni played with the sacrificial vessels when he was born, and King Wen gave his teacher no trouble when he was born. All of this came of itself and never waited for the leather and the bowstring. So it is said that it is not taken by a raid of righteousness, and this is that.

The present minister of works, so-and-so, is the eldest son of Lord Yangyang, the royal younger brother. From the time he left the smell of milk he took delight, lightly and freely, in the writings and the histories. He chanted as he walked and recited as he sat, and his eye was not caught by other things. When he grew up there was nothing in learning he had not looked into and no principle he had not mastered. He was so broad that it was like looking at a river or a lake with no shore to be seen. In poems and rhapsodies too he was skilled, and his use of the brush was fine and subtle. Had he lifted his head toward the examination ground and striven for the first or the second place, the world would have called him the mark of the royal house.

It is a pity. Heaven did not give him years, and of a sudden he went to the summons of the jade tower.

The mountain man Gwano once roamed at his house and searched out the writings he had left, and he found eight or nine poems in the recent style. He thought well of them for having the two beauties in them, and he showed them to me. They had a soaring air and a form that rose above the clouds. He means to cut them on blocks and hand them down to later times, and so I have written a rough preface for them.

From of old the kin of the royal house have received their fief in swaddling clothes, and their eyes have delighted in pearls and kingfisher feathers and their ears in strings and pipes, and few have set their minds on writing. Now the minister of works, so-and-so, loved learning by nature. Before he was seven or eight he took still more delight in the writings and the histories, and even when he sat down to eat and drink the sound of his reciting did not stop outside the room.