Poetic Thoughts of Historical Sites 5, Du Fu (300 Tang Shi #194)

Zhuge’s great fame has come down through all space and all of time,
A model of a minister, revered as pure and noble.
Han split in three—a state established: plans and devious schemes—
Ten-thousand ages—empyreal: a single feather plume.
He’s scarcely any different compared with Yi and Lü—
Commander with the same chance of defeat as Xiao and Cao.
The Han throne’s fortunes had declined, were difficult to restore:
His will was staunch—his life burnt out toiling at martial tasks.

咏怀古迹 之五
诸葛大名垂宇宙，
宗臣遗像肃清高。
三分割据纡筹策，
万古云霄一羽毛。
伯仲之间见伊吕，
指挥若定失萧曹。
运移汉祚终难复，
志决身歼军务劳。

And finally (and surely you saw this coming) Du Fu takes up Zhuge Liang himself—and drops the pretense of thinking about any actual historical site. The bit about the feather is comparing him to a fabulous bird (such as a phoenix) flying high in the heavens. Idiom: scarcely any different is literally “(like) the gap between an oldest brother and a second brother.” And by way of annotating the Inevitable Historical Comparisons: • Yi Yin was a minister who helped the first Shang Dynasty king overthrow the Xia; • Lü Shang was a minister who helped the first kings of the Zhou Dynasty overthrow the Shang; • Xiao He and Cao Can were chancellors of the first Han emperor, both of whom, yes, helped him overthrow the Qin Dynasty and win the resulting civil war.

And that gets us through the Du Fu mountain range. Whew …

---L.