356 t He y uan, m i ng, anD q i ng Dy na s t i e s
Up north in Shuofang there were many bold plans, they say,
8 Only nowadays where is there a Guo Fenyang?
[MSBC, 717]秋望 (qiū wàng)
Yellow River water wind Han border wall 黃河水繞漢邊牆 (Huáng hé shuĭ rào Hàn biān qiáng)
river above autumn wind wild goose several row 河上秋風雁幾行 (hé shàng qiū fēng yàn jĭ háng)
attacker- [suffix] cross moat pursue wild horse 客子過壕追野馬 (kè zĭ guò háo zhuī yě mă)
general [suffix] bow case arrow shoot sky wolf 將軍弢箭射天狼 (jiāng jūn tāo jiàn shè tiān láng)
yellow dust ancient ford confuse fly cart 黃塵古渡迷飛輓 (huáng chén gŭ dù mí fēi wăn)
white moon across empty cold battle field 白月橫空冷戰場 (bái yuè héng kōng lěng zhàn chăng)
hear say Shuo- fang many brave strategy 聞道朔方多勇略 (wén dào Shuò fāng duō yŏng luè)
only now who is Guo Fen- yang 只今誰是郭汾陽 (zhĭ jīn shuí shì Guō Fén yáng)
[Tonal pattern Ia, see p. 172]
The northwestern frontier became a popular theme in High Tang poetry, at-
tending the military expansion of the empire.8 In the Ming Archaist valorization
of Tang models, the frontier theme was often taken up by both male and female
poets as a literary exercise and, in some cases, as poetic records of actual expedi-
tions. By its very subject matter, the frontier topos lends itself to capturing the
strength and vigor of Tang poetry. The title of the poem, “Autumn Gaze,” sets up
the anticipation of a seasonal view. Li Mengyang skillfully deploys Tang poetic
conventions to re-create the broad expansive prospect of the border region. The
opening couplet begins with the scene of a vast horizon suggested by the view
of the Yellow River meandering along the Great Wall of the Han dynasty, using
the conventional temporal displacement to the past employed in Tang poetry. The
visual trajectory is directed upward to the sky by the image of wild geese migrating
south, seen as distant lines above the riverscape. The two required parallel couplets
in the middle each form perfect syntactic, semantic, and tonal contrasts (lines 3–4
and 5–6). These formal symmetrical structures further elaborate on details of the
frontier. In an offensive attack, the non-Chinese nomadic tribes, riding on horses,
cross the defensive moats into Chinese territory. Li Mengyang cleverly employs
the term “wild horses,” an allusion for rousing energy (qi),9 to create the spectacle
of nomadic attackers galloping across the dusty desert. This invasion is countered
by the force of the defensive act of the Han general aiming his arrow at the “Heav-
enly Wolf ” (the star Sirius), here standing for the “barbarians.” The scene depicted
in this couplet with such vivid imagery, as though witnessed by the poet, is tempo-
rally ambiguous, suspended between past and present in the poet’s imagination. It
is an imagined battle scene in the past triggered by the poet’s arrival at the frontier.
Its pastness is reinforced in the next couplet by the timeless quality of the “ancient
ford,” enduring moon, and deserted battleground frozen in history. Only with the
rhetorical question in the closing couplet, in which the poet follows the desired
move to the affective mode in regulated verse, does he articulate his admiration