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as for their relatives far from the front lines wondering whether their loved ones were even still alive.
Characteristics which would come to define later frontier poetry were already emerging in The Book of
Songs, in particular how sentiments of those affected by war often overpowered the events of battles
themselves and how the details of military campaigns were often de-emphasized to accommodate
expressions of homesickness and the pain resulting from an absence of both the geographically and
socially familiar.
However, two areas in which the Book of Songs does not anticipate later trends in frontier
poetry are in descriptions of the frontier environment itself and a rising vividness, if never
overpoweringly sanguine, in describing battlefields. 41 The latter of these two movements is announced
by the “Hymn of the Fallen” (“Guo Shang” 国 殇 ) from the Nine Songs (“Jiu ge” 九 歌 ) section of the
Chu Ci 42 楚 辞 . Although not a frontier poem per se, the importance of the “Hymn of the Fallen” in this
discussion lies in how the work presages a gradual progression towards distinct battlefield imagery; its
minutiae of shields clashing and chariot wheels grinding lays the foundation for frontier poetry that
included the specifics of battle, 43 details which in the Book of Songs were generally excluded: 44
操 吴 戈 兮 被 犀 甲
车 错 毂 兮 短 兵 接
旗 蔽 日 兮 敌 若 云
矢 交 坠 兮 士 争 先
........................
出 不 入 兮 往 不 反
平 原 忽 兮 路 超 远
Grasping our great shields and wearing our hide armour,
Wheel-hub to wheel-hub locked, we battle hand to hand.
Our banners darken the sky, the enemy teem like clouds;
Through the hail of arrows the warriors press forward.
They went out never more to return,
Far, far away they lie, on the level plain.
41 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yan jiu”, pp.27-28.
42 Whereas the Book of Songs is a born of northern Chinese culture, the Chu Ci ( 楚 辞 ), whose earliest works date from the
fourth century B.C., represents early southern Chinese literary production (the title of the collection literally being
“Words of Chu”, a large state located in the south of China). Compared to the Book of Songs, the Chu Ci is more
rhapsodic in tone, richer and more fantastic in imagery. See Burton Watson, The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry:
From Early Times to the Thirteenth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), p. 45.
43 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu, p.28.
44 In his “Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism”, C.H. Wang notes that “[Hymn of the Fallen] happens to be the only early
Chinese poem that ever represents a recognizable passage involving the actual clash of arms in a battle scene”. See C.H.
Wang, “Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism”, p. 33.