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64
沙 上 见 日 出
沙 上 见 日 没
悔 向 万 里 来
72
功 名 是 何 物
Above the desert see the sun rise
Above the desert see the sun set
Regretting having come ten-thousand li
Success and fame: what are they?
The most remarkable strength of Cen Shen's frontier poems rests in descriptions of frontier
environments, a facet which will be addressed shortly. As for attitudes towards frontier war, Cen Shen's
works tend to be somewhat simplistic in comparison to Gao Shi whose descriptive focus on the human
aspect of war is finer than Cen Shen's. 73 When they do manage to step back from the hortatory,
laudatory or self-serving, the poet-narrators in Cen Shen's frontier verse are usually silent on issues of
military policy and the broader effects of frontier warfare. This is where Gao Shi's frontier poems come
to prominence. By projecting High Tang frontier poetry along an arc which incorporates an intricate
assembly of responses to frontier war, Gao Shi is able to offer ample reason for assessing the era's
contributions to the subgenre as being some of the most memorable. His “Song of Yan” (“Yange xing”
燕 歌 行 ) is the flagship representing such a great diversity of responses to borderland conflict. 74
Through groupings of thematically linked lines flowing in rapid and immaculate succession,
Gao Shi unites an array of antipodal attitudes towards martial affairs in “Song of Yan”. 75 As for
poem was written several years later while Cen Shen was returning east from the western frontier. See Zhang Hui
Censhen biansai shixuan, p. 96. Given the poem's stated regret at having come so far into the desert, the repetitiveness
of the scene, and the derision expressed for seeking success and fame, I would invest my faith in the former of the two
dates.
72
CSJJZ, p. 145.
73
Hong Zan, Tangdai zhangzhengshi yanjiu, p. 88.
74
Gao Shi's breadth of realism and complexity of responses to frontier issues surpassed those of other poets with works in
the subgenre. A frequent reason given for such distinction is Gao Shi's primary experience with martial life while serving
on extensive frontier missions, an opportunity he sought early on in his life so that he could prove his prowess outside
the narrow confines of the official examination system. See Ren Wenjing 任 文 京 , Zhongguo gudai biansaishishi 中 国 古
代 边 塞 诗 史 (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe 人 民 出 版 社 , 2010), pp. 210-211.
75
As a yuefu topic, “Song of Yan” ( 燕 歌 行 ) in its earliest textual instances focused on a husband sent to serve the state far
from home, a service from which he was unable to return, and the wife's boundless grief, a sadness she had no means of
relating 行 役 不 归 , 妇 人 怨 旷 无 所 诉 也 . See YFSJ 32.469. Gao Shi briefly exploits this initial theme without making it
central to his poem; Cao Pi's ( 曹 丕 ) “Song of Yan”, however, unfolds along the yuefushiji title's primeval trajectory to
bring out “the latent sentimentality of the theme”. See Marie Chan, “Kao Shih's Yen Ko-Hsing”, p. 207. Gao Shi's “Song
of Yan” is not only the poet's representative work, it is also one of the most thematically diverse of any Tang frontier
poem through its incorporation of elements of the frontier landscape, frontier battle, and shifts between praise and
sympathy for the average frontier soldier and condemnation of both official corruption and disastrous frontier policies