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哥 舒 大 夫 破 九 曲 之 作 ) not only avoids an ellipsis of battle but also invites the ambulatory heads of the
“Hymn of the Fallen” back to the scene:
奇 兵 邀 转 战
Troops in ambush engage on many battlefields,
连 孥 绝 归 奔
Arrayed crossbows exterminate retreating fugitives.
泉 喷 诸 戎 血
The springs spurt many barbarians' blood,
风 驱 死 虏 魂
The wind spurs the souls of dead Lu.
头 飞 攒 万 戟
Heads fly, pierced by a myriad lances,
面 缚 聚 辕 门
Hands tied behind their backs, gathered at the barrack gate.
魂 哭 黄 埃 暮
Ghosts wail, yellow dust darkens,
52
天 愁 白 日 昏 Sorrowful sky, dusk in daytime 53 .
(lines 5-12)
The Book of Songs and Chu Ci 54 set the first cobble stones for what would form into the long
and serpentine road into the realm of war-themed frontier poetry. Though the two collections are
involved, it is the former in which attitudes towards warfare and the effects of frontier service, both on
those cleaved from loved ones forced to endure military service as well as those left alone and far
behind, are related and later adapted and elaborated upon innumerable times throughout the centuries
leading to the Tang dynasty. And although not frontier poems themselves, the recently cited works
nevertheless do emit a thematic pulse which would resonate within the complex accretion of divergent
responses to what would become the very common social phenomenon of war on the frontier.
2.2. The Second Facet: Frontier Peoples and Customs
Han period Yuefu, or Music Bureau, poems (Yuefu 乐 府 ) 55 in which the boundary between
52 QTS 214.2235
53 Slight modifiction of Marie Chan, tr., Kao Shih, p. 37.
54 The latter's influence, as stated already, is primarily restricted to the evolution of battlefield descriptions of frontier
poetry.
55 Yuefu was the name of the Music Bureau established by the Han emperor Wu Di around 120 B.C. The institution was
charged with collecting anonymous songs from various parts of China. After its abolition, numerous writers from the
Han down to modern period composed poems in the style of anonymous yuefu poems which often bore the same titles as
their anonymous models but were often apt to differ in content. See Hans Frankel, “Yueh-Fu Poetry” in Cyril Birch ed.,
Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 69-70. The collection of works
and its “patterns of association with the Music Bureau reached a definitive shape in the eleventh century anthology