At Mt. Xisai, Pondering the Past, Liu Yuxi (300 Tang Shi #204)

When Wang Jun’s towered ships descended from Chengdu,
The lord of Nanjing fumed and sullenly received them
With thousand-fathom iron chains to sink them down,
And yet his single drooping banner left Shitou.
In the mortal world, many go back to past offenses—
The mountain’s form still rests its head on the cold current.
Today, throughout the world, we’re like a family.
This rampart’s old and dreary—rushes in the autumn.

西塞山怀古
王浚楼船下益州，
金陵王气黯然收。
千寻铁锁沈江底，
一片降旛出石头。
人世几回伤往事，
山形依旧枕寒流。
从今四海为家日，
故垒萧萧芦荻秋。



Mt. Xisai (“west frontier”) is a large hill on the bank of the Yangzi east of Huangshi, Hubei. At those times rival states have controlling the middle and lower Yangzi basin, such as Northern Jin and Wu (for it is in the late Three Kingdoms era that our scene lies), it often was a border fortress and the site of battles. Wang Jun was a Jin general who built and commanded a flotilla of ships with towers for attacking river forts, as part of the final invasion of Wu, the capital of which was Nanjing. Wu countered by stretching spiked chains across the Yangzi to sink them—apparently in this area (I haven’t been able to confirm this yet). Shitou (“stone head”) City is where Sun Hao, the last ruler of Wu, surrendered to Jin forces. Fathom here translates xun, an old unit of length that was slightly longer than the English measure. Lost in translation: the ships were sunk “(to) the river bottom.” Idiom: throughout the world is literally “(within) the four seas” (that whole passage is a wee bit compacted).

I am delighted to realize that both the “air/vapor” and “get angry” senses of 气 are encompassed by “fume.”

---L.