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interest in describing the frontier environment, be it perceptually or through its effects on those within
its geographic confines, but frontier topography had still yet to receive the degree of attention attained
in Cen Shen's frontier poetry. Even with this being the case, there are still examples from pre-Tang
frontier-themed poetry that anticipate how the frontier landscape would be constructed as a linguistic
entity which could move between foreground and background roles as a poem unfolded. .
35
The landscape itself of the extreme and inclement frontier regions began to gain poignant
perceptual precision and emotional resonance in Cao Cao's 曹 操
80
“Song of Enduring Cold 81 ”
(“Kuhan xing” 苦 寒 行 ). The poem's use of scene to convey emotion through exquisite details of the
frontier environment made it especially distinct from previous works of a similar nature in which the
actual setting had hitherto received a less sustained treatment of thermal, meteorological and animal
detail. 82 Quoted below is the first half of the poem within which sharp mountain heights, cold moaning
winds 83 and claw wielding predators conspire to test the mettle of the campaigning soldiers:
80 Cao Cao (155-220), a powerful military leader in northern China during the turbulent years of the Han dynasty's
decline, “seems to have possessed considerable learning and a fine literary sense, and is noted for his poems in the yuefu
style”. See Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism, pp. 37-38.
81 “The Han period yuefu, as well as folk songs of the Book of Songs, often described the hardships of military service,
usually from the point of view of the disgruntled common soldier. Cao Cao here takes up the same theme. But he writes
neither as the leader of the campaign nor as a member of the rank and file; rather he seems to give voice to the
complaints of the entire army as it stumbles over the bleak mountain trails” . See Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism, p.
38.
82 Kam-lung Ng, “Tangdai biansaishi yanjiu”, p. 42.
83 When it came to representing the frontier landscape, Cao Cao's “Song of Enduring Cold” was to become the touchstone
in describing the inclement northern climes found in frontier poetry, “regions [which] were defined almost exclusively
by cold and aridity...[from] early Chinese concept[s] of the world”. See Joseph R. Allen, In the Voices of Others, p. 89.
But this dominant trope of thermally cold landscape imagery in the subgenre was also derivative of Han dynasty yuefu
poems depicting the northern frontier, the geographic realities of the region itself, and historical texts denoting a
northern territory as uncomfortably chilly. Such an environment could also act as a correlative for emotions engendered
by the trials of frontier service, its accompanying isolation, and the pains of separation frequently expressed in the
poetry prior to the Tang dynasty, and still present in Tang frontier poetry while also having to compete with feelings of
optimism and resolution towards martial activities at the frontier. See Yan Fuling 阎 福 玲 , “Han-Tang biansaishi zhuti
yanjiu 汉 唐 边 塞 诗 主 题 研 究 ”PhD. Diss., Nanjing Normal University 南 京 师 范 大 学 博 士 学 位 论 文 , 2004, passim. An
example of these divergent Tang responses to the frontier cold can be found when reading the first of Gao Shi's
“Dispatching the Qingyi troops to Juyong” (“Shi qingyijun ru juyong sanshou” 使 青 夷 军 入 居 庸 三 首 ) against Cen
Shen's “Ballad of Running Horse River: Presented When Sending Off Lord Feng Leading His Troops on a Western
Campaign” (“Zoumachuanxing fengsong fengdafu chushi xizheng” 走 马 川 行 奉 送 封 大 夫 出 师 西 征 ). In Gao Shi's
poem, a bone chilling frontier environment manifests the soldiers war weariness and pessimistic vision of martial service
in the borderlands: “The horses' travels linger on and on/The campaign road, a leave-taking of twists and toils/Not
knowing that frontier lands are different/Only shocked that our clothes are thin/Streams cold, spring sounds
bitter/Mountain empty, tree leaves desiccated/Do not say at the far reaches of the frontier pass/that clouds and snow are
still boundless 匹 马 行 将 久 , 征 途 去 转 难 . 不 知 边 地 别 , 只 讶 客 一 单 . 溪 冷 泉 声 苦 , 山 空 木 叶 干 . 莫 言 关 塞 极 , 云 雪 尚