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20
玉 箸 应 啼 别 离 后
少 妇 城 南 欲 断 肠
征 人 蓟 北 空 回 首
15
Jade chopsticks 14 answer sobs after departing
Young wife south of the city walls is about to breakdown
The soldiering husband on campaign north of Ji vainly
turns back his head
(lines 17-20)
Both soldiers of the two poems have no recourse but to endure the expanse of space between
themselves and those with whom they long to reunite. The wife in “Beating Drums”, however, does not
wait for her husband to return, instead giving him up for dead and remarrying: 16
于 嗟 阔 兮
不 我 活 兮
于 嗟 洵 兮
17
不 我 信 兮
Oh, what distance between us,
It simply won't allow us to live.
Oh, to be so far away,
You lost faith in me.
(lines 17-20)
“My Lord is in Service” (“Junzi yuyi” 君 子 于 役 ) anticipates those frontier poems whose
martially motivated theme rests on a perspectival shift from the soldier stationed far from home and
pining for loved ones to that of the lonely wife managing her days independently while wondering how
her spouse is fairing in his military role. Although “My Lord is in Service” may not necessarily refer to
a soldier dispatched to the frontier, the theme at its core is nonetheless a precursor to frontier poems of
and prior to the Tang about despairing wives whose husbands are enlisted to serve in distant border
regions:
14 “Chopsticks” used not for eating but for styling one's hair. Read as a parallel structure working in relationship with the
previous line's “armour coats”, a metaphor for husband -soldiers away at the frontier, “jade chopsticks” can be
understood as a nominal compound referring to soldiers' wives left behind at home alone. See Yuan Jiaxiu 袁 嘉 秀
“Yan Ge Xing” 'Yuzhu' biejie' 《 燕 歌 行 》' 玉 箸 ' 别 解 ”Yuwenyuekan 语 文 月 刊 2000.10, p. 39. For another more
common interpretation of “jade chopsticks” see chapter three of this thesis.
15 GSJJZ, p.81
16 Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs, p. 113.
17 Shijing, p.16