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57
and forever pacifying the borders 33 pervading the foundation of the poem, the poet-narrator here
nonetheless welcomes becoming “a patriot willing to leave behind a life of ease and wealth to serve his
country”. 34 The plain, almost natural, patriotism of the poet-narrator supersedes all traces of selfish
desire; in fact, any possibility of the fervour so common in statements of taking up arms to fortify the
frontier drowns in the poem's final sigh over the futility of all human ventures:
本 为 贵 公 子
平 生 实 爱 才
感 时 思 报 国
拔 剑 起 蒿 莱
西 驰 丁 零 塞
北 上 单 于 台
登 山 见 千 里
怀 古 心 悠 哉
谁 言 未 忘 祸
I am the child of a noble family,
All my life I've admired talent.
Stirred by the times, I longed to serve the state,
Grasped my sword and rose up from the wilds.
To the west I galloped to Ding Ling's passes,
To the north I climbed the terrace of the Xiongnu chief.
Went up a mountain, gazed a thousand miles,
Meditating on the past 35 , my heart was grieved.
No one can claim that we have forgotten our disasters,
磨 灭 成 尘 埃
36
To be ground into grains of dust. 37
While “Stirred By My Experiences, No. 35” demonstrates an absence of fear and hesitation in
defending Tang territory against external existential threats, the verve in doing so, a spirit common in
the aforementioned Early Tang examples of attitudes towards serving on the frontier, is destroyed in a
collision between “the undaunted courage of the border poem” 38 and the reality of the situation, a clash
of ideal and actuality that presages many High Tang treatments of war on the frontier.
Li Qi's “Below the Frontier” (“Saixia qu” 塞 下 曲 ) is also an instance in which the bravado and
33
Stephen Owen, The Poetry of the Early T'ang, p. 222.
34
Richard M Ho, Ch'en Tzu-Ang: Innovator in T'ang Poetry, p. 125.
35
The final four lines of the poem have a potent huai gu 怀 古 quality, “a distinct genre [translated as] 'thinking of
antiquity', longing for the past [as well as 'meditating on the past]. It is not surprising that Chinese poets, living in a land
of great antiquity which had witnessed the rise and fall of countless rulers and ruling houses, should often have dwelt on
this theme”. See Burton Watson, Chinese Lyricism, 88. This amalgamation of “frontier poetry” and “huai gu” is further
testament to the complication of poetic stances towards frontier war already at an incipient stage in Chen Zi'ang's
examples of the subgenre.
36
QTS 83.894.
37
A slightly modified version of Stephen Owen, tr., The Poetry of the Early T'ang, p. 221.
38
Ibid., p. 222.