When he was a youth of fifteen or twenty, <br />He chased a wild horse, he caught him and rode him, <br />He shot the white-browed mountain tiger, <br />He defied the yellow-bristled Horseman of Ye. <br />Fighting single- handed for a thousand miles, <br />With his naked dagger he could hold a multitude. <br />...Granted that the troops of China were as swift as heaven's thunder <br />And that Tartar soldiers perished in pitfalls fanged with iron, <br />General Wei Qing's victory was only a thing of chance. <br />And General Li Guang's thwarted effort was his fate, not his fault. <br />Since this man's retirement he is looking old and worn: <br />Experience of the world has hastened his white hairs. <br />Though once his quick dart never missed the right eye of a bird, <br />Now knotted veins and tendons make his left arm like an osier. <br />He is sometimes at the road-side selling melons from his garden, <br />He is sometimes planting willows round his hermitage. <br />His lonely lane is shut away by a dense grove, <br />His vacant window looks upon the far cold mountains <br />But, if he prayed, the waters would come gushing for his men <br />And never would he wanton his cause away with wine. <br />...War-clouds are spreading, under the Helan Range; <br />Back and forth, day and night, go feathered messages; <br />In the three River Provinces, the governors call young men -- <br />And five imperial edicts have summoned the old general. <br />So he dusts his iron coat and shines it like snow- <br />Waves his dagger from its jade hilt in a dance of starry steel. <br />He is ready with his strong northern bow to smite the Tartar chieftain -- <br />That never a foreign war-dress may affront the Emperor. <br />...There once was an aged Prefect, forgotten and far away, <br />Who still could manage triumph with a single stroke.<br /><br />Wang Wei<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/song-of-an-old-general/
