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