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Border Songs 4, Wang Changling
Thursday, 10 March 2022 07:52Beside this border, oh how cruel, so cruel—
We just got done interring our “General Huo,”
Battalions and squads, all of us mourning together.
But in south Yan and northern Dai are rumors:
Our many worthy deeds will be dismissed,
The troops and horses separated soon,
With some sent off to Huanglong garrison …
We have to weep at fortresses and clouds.
塞下曲 之四
边头何惨惨，
已葬霍将军。
部曲皆相吊，
燕南代北闻。
功勋多被黜，
兵马亦寻分。
更遣黄龙戍，
唯当哭塞云。
Fourth of a four-poem set, the first two of which were included in 3TP as #36-37. General Huo was Han general Huo Qubing, a type for a successful and popular military leader who died young. Yan and Dai were districts in what’s now northern Hebei and Shanxi, where apparently this young general commanded (the historical Huo fought the Xiongnu on the northwest frontier instead). Huanglong (“yellow dragon”) was on the northeast frontier, in modern Liaoning, so further east. (If you’re keeping track, the first two poems of the sequence were set in Ningxia and Gansu, both well to the west.)
---L.
We just got done interring our “General Huo,”
Battalions and squads, all of us mourning together.
But in south Yan and northern Dai are rumors:
Our many worthy deeds will be dismissed,
The troops and horses separated soon,
With some sent off to Huanglong garrison …
We have to weep at fortresses and clouds.
塞下曲 之四
边头何惨惨，
已葬霍将军。
部曲皆相吊，
燕南代北闻。
功勋多被黜，
兵马亦寻分。
更遣黄龙戍，
唯当哭塞云。
Fourth of a four-poem set, the first two of which were included in 3TP as #36-37. General Huo was Han general Huo Qubing, a type for a successful and popular military leader who died young. Yan and Dai were districts in what’s now northern Hebei and Shanxi, where apparently this young general commanded (the historical Huo fought the Xiongnu on the northwest frontier instead). Huanglong (“yellow dragon”) was on the northeast frontier, in modern Liaoning, so further east. (If you’re keeping track, the first two poems of the sequence were set in Ningxia and Gansu, both well to the west.)
---L.