Du Mu’s Frontier Moonlight Sorrow | Generated by AI
Question: Provide an introduction to Du Mu’s poem “Early Geese” (《早雁》)
Answer:
杜牧《早雁》 is one of the most famous “border-frontier” (边塞) poems in the late Tang dynasty, written by Du Mu (杜牧, 803–852), one of the most important poets of the Late Tang period.
Original Text
早雁
金河秋半虏弦惊，
云外惊飞四散鸣。
碛里征人三十万，
一时回首月中情。
Modern Chinese Translation (for clearer understanding)
秋天刚到一半，金河那边胡人的弓弦突然响起，
大雁在云外受惊，四散飞逃，发出哀鸣。
大漠深处三十万征人，
在这一刻同时回头，望着月亮，充满深情与乡思。
English Translation (common poetic version)
Early Geese
In mid-autumn at the Jin River, barbarian bowstrings startled them—
Beyond the clouds the wild geese scattered in panic, crying.
Three hundred thousand soldiers in the desert frontier,
All at once turned their heads, hearts full in the moonlight.
Background & Writing Context
- Time: Most scholars believe it was written around Dahe 大和 or Kaicheng 开成 era (around 827–841), during the reign of Emperor Wenzong or Wuzong.
- Historical event: It refers to the Tang court’s campaign against the northern tribes (likely the Uyghur Khaganate or the northern frontier defense against various steppe groups). In 842–843, there were major military mobilizations and border conflicts.
- Du Mu never personally went to the frontier. This poem belongs to the “poetry of longing from the capital” tradition — he wrote it in Chang’an (or nearby) imagining the scene at the northern border.
Main Artistic Features
-
Starting with geese as the eye of the poem
Unlike most frontier poems that begin with soldiers or battle scenes, Du Mu opens with startled wild geese, using their panic to indirectly show the sudden outbreak of war tension. - “One moment, thirty thousand heads turn” — the most famous line
“一时回首月中情” is widely regarded as one of the greatest single lines in Tang poetry.- It creates a grand, cinematic scene: hundreds of thousands of soldiers simultaneously looking back toward the central plains / their homeland under the same moon.
- It conveys overwhelming shared homesickness without saying “I miss home” directly.
- Sound, space, and contrast
- Sounds: bowstring → geese crying → silence
- Space: from the distant Jin River → cloud heights → vast Gobi desert → moon
- Contrast: small geese vs. huge army; chaotic fleeing vs. unified turning of heads
Core Theme
The poem expresses:
- the cruelty and tension of border wars
- the deep, silent longing for home shared by countless soldiers
- sympathy for ordinary soldiers (rather than glorifying generals or the emperor)
Literary Status
- Frequently included in middle-school and high-school textbooks in China
- Often called one of the most perfect seven-character quatrains of the Late Tang
- The line “一时回首月中情” is one of the most quoted and memorized Tang verses
In short: Early Geese uses migrating geese startled by war drums to open a window into the shared homesickness of 300,000 frontier soldiers under the same moon — a concise yet emotionally vast masterpiece of Late Tang poetry.
References:
- https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/早雁
- Classical Chinese poetry anthologies (e.g. 《唐诗三百首》)