View/Open - University of Victoria

225
过 燕 支 寄 杜 位 Passing Yanzhi Mountain: Sent to Du Wei 12
燕 支 山 西 酒 泉 道 West of Yanzhi mountain there is the road to Jiuquan, 13
北 风 吹 沙 卷 白 草 The north wind blows sand and rolls up the white frontier
grasses.
长 安 遥 在 日 光 边 Chang'an is far away by the shining rays of the sun,
14
忆 君 不 见 令 人 老 Remembering you and not being able to meet makes
one old. 15
12 Yanzhi mountain is located east of today's Shandan county 山 丹 县 , Gansu province. Du Wei was Du Fu's 杜 甫 younger
male cousin. See CSJJZ, pp. 76 and 45.
13 Name of a Tang dynasty commandery. The local seat of government was at today's Jiuquan county 酒 泉 县 , Gansu
province.
14 CSJJZ, p. 75.
15 The concluding line echoes the final lines of the first of the “Nineteen Ancient Poems” 古 诗 十 九 首 : “Thinking of you
makes me old;/Years and months suddenly go by./Abandoned, I will say no more;/Pick up your strength and eat more!”
思 君 令 人 老 , 岁 月 忽 已 晚 . 弃 捐 勿 复 道 , 努 力 加 餐 饭 . See original and translation in Kenneth P.H. Ho, tr., The Nineteen
Ancient Poems (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh, 1977), pp. 38-39. “The Nineteen Ancient Poems are traditionally
considered the earliest extant examples of pentasyllabic verse...As well as establishing the basic shi 诗 meter of five
[characters] per line, the Nineteen Old Poems also announced themes and techniques which were to reappear in Chinese
poetry throughout the centuries...The poems are characterized by two dominant perspectives, that of the lonely woman
in her room longing for her faraway lover and that of a man who, forced to travel away from home, sees his life as a
continual journey”. See William H. Nienhauser, Jr., ed., The Indiana Companion to Traditional Chinese Literature, p.
489-490.