Kim Hwang Won was a well-known poet in Koryo. Touring the scenic spots in our country, he composed a number of poems about the beautiful scenery.
One summer he climbed the Moran Hill to the Pubyok Pavilion overlooking the beautiful mountains and rivers in Pyongyang. Gazing at the Taedong River of translucent blue skirting round the Chongryu Cliff and the Walled City of Pyongyang, and East Pyongyang spread out endlessly in mist, he just stood still for a long while, enchanted by the magnificent view.
(I have never seen such wonderful scenery before!)
He was lost in appreciating the beauty of the landscape.
He was maturing his idea of a poem for a good while with his arm on the pillar until finally he started driving his writing brush catching the eyes of a crowd of people surrounding him.
Even though he wrote down a few lines at a go without difficulty, he was prevented from carrying on.
After some minutes of looking down from the pavilion with the brush in his hand, he made another attempt. However, he found it more and more difficult to continue with the poem. When he looked far down at the translucent blue waters of the Taedong River from the Pubyok Pavilion, he felt as if he was standing on the pavilion in “the Palace of the Sea God”, which sprang high above the sea, and looking over the Tongdaewon Field veiled in mist made him feel like standing on the balcony of “the Palace in Heaven” floating over the clouds. He found his talent was far from the charming scenery that struck him with a fresh impression everytime.
All of a sudden, he broke the stem of his brush and wept smacking his hand down on to the floor.
“Ah, I am not talented enough to depict the beauty of Pyongyang!”
Lamenting over the lack of his talent, he continued weeping until late at night before he left there. Later, the people in Pyongyang kept his unfinished two-line poem hanging on the pillar of the pavilion and at present it is seen on the column of the Ryongwang Pavilion. That is Kim Hwang Won’s unfinished poem “On the Pubyok Pavilion”.
The reason why they hung his poem on the pillar of the Pubyok Pavilion lies in the fact that they wanted to be proud of the beauty of Pyongyang generation after generation, which even a famous poet could not find enough poetic words to depict as well as the fact that it was well-written.
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