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of activity, and then one line of each state of kinesis before the poet-narrator turns his focus in the last
two lines of the excerpt towards non-geographic existents:
162
天 山 雪 云 常 不 开
千 峰 万 岭 雪 崔 嵬
北 风 夜 卷 赤 庭 口
一 夜 天 山 雪 更 厚
能 兼 汉 月 照 银 山
复 逐 胡 风 过 铁 关
交 河 城 边 鸟 飞 绝
轮 台 路 上 马 蹄 滑
Snow clouds never break on Tian Mountain
Tens of thousands of lofty peaks and ranges are covered
in snow.
The night's north wind rolls over Chiting Pass;
As night passes, the snow is thicker on Tian Mountain.
The snow both reflects the Han moon and shines on
Yin Mountain
And again chases the Hu wind through Iron Gate Pass.
At the edge of Jiaohe birds in flight disappear;
On the Luntai road horses' hooves slip.
(“Song of Snow on Tian Mountain”, lines 1-8)
Stillness is focalized in the first two lines through the negation and absence of verbs: in line one, the
snow clouds' lack of movement is the result of them “not breaking” (bu kai 不 开 ), and in the second
line mountain peaks and mountain ranges are lined up and covered in snow to create a sense of stasis.
At lines three and four, the degree of kinesis increases from inertness to action: winds “roll” (juan 卷 )
over the ground, a common trope in Cen Shen's frontier poems for infusing the terrain with sudden
dynamism, and snow no longer quietly sits on lofty peaks but gradually increases in density (geng hou
更 厚 ). Line five then tempers the highly kinetic with a quiescent and ethereal “shining” (zhao 照 ) of
snowy moonlight on Yin mountain before the Hu wind 84 (hu feng 胡 风 ) is chased through Iron Gate
Pass to propel the hibernal scene back into active kinesis. .
Unlike “Song of Snow on Tian Mountain”, the poet-narrator of “Song of White Snow” focalizes
the active kinesis of the landscape without shifting between activity and stillness:
北 风 卷 地 白 草 折
The north wind rolls up the ground, white grasses snap,
84 For readers with an interest in a typology of poetic frontier wind, see See Yan's division of such entities into direction,
strength, emotion and combination in Yan Fuling, “ Han-Tang biansaishi zhuti yanjiu”, p. 25.