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22
闺 中 少 妇 不 曾 愁
春 日 凝 妆 上 翠 楼
忽 见 陌 头 杨 柳 色
23
悔 教 夫 婿 觅 封 侯
The young wife in her boudoir does not know the
sorrow of parting,
A spring day and resplendently dressed she ascends the
steps of her green coloured home.
Suddenly she sees the image of willow trees 22 beside
the road,
and regrets allowing her husband to go and seek
an official noble title. 24
The aforementioned poems from The Book of Songs contain the primitive genes common to
frontier poetry of the theme of separation caused by the demands of a husband serving in a distant army
and the resultant misery felt by both parties of the marriage. “Gathering Ferns” (“Cai Wei” 采 薇 ),
another work from the same ancient collection, is noted for both deepening the emotional impact of the
seemingly endless life of soldiering while also introducing and invigorating the description of frontier
life and battle scenes, details whose enrichment would expand over the centuries but whose source is
found in these early texts. 25 In accounting for the genesis of the defining thematic characteristics of
Tang frontier poetry, the importance of “Gathering Ferns” rests in its descriptions of martial activities
and frontier life. However, in the opinion of some writers, the poem is also germane by being a
contender for the first Chinese frontier poem. 26 Ng's support for this second hypothesis derives from the
is indicative of the wife's longing for her husband as well as her dismay for having allowed him to depart.
22 Willow trees, in addition to their arboreal being, were a symbol of departure.
23 QTS 143.1446.
24 See Daniel Hsieh, The Evolution of Jueju Verse (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 44-47, on the structure of the
quatrain in which the four lines are traditionally divided into an opening (qi 起 ), continuation (cheng 承 ), turn (zhuan
转 ) and resolution (he 合 ).
25 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 25; Robert Shanmu Chen, “A Study of Bao Zhao and his Poetry” PhD.
diss, University of British Columbia, 1989, p. 174.
26 An earlier footnote registered my own reservations towards such an assessment; I am presenting these opposing opinions
for the reader's contemplation.