塞下曲

塞下曲 　
　　卢纶 　
　　林暗草惊风， 　
　　将军夜引弓。 　
　　平明寻白羽， 　
　　没在石棱中。 　
　　"the woods are black and a wind assails the grasses, / Yet the general tries night archery-- / And nest morning he finds his white-plumed arrow / Pointed deep in the hard rock." 　
　　The poem retells with some artistic revisions the story based on the article about General Li Guang written by Sima Qian, a renowned historian of the Western Han Dynasty. 　
　　This is a story about General Li Guang hunting a tiger. The first two lines describe what happened during a dark night. Hills and woods were obscure in the dusk of the night. Suddenly grasses started rustling with gusts of fierce wind, The General galloping along the verge of the woods noticed a movement in a thick growth of grass as if a white tiger were to spring on him. Swiftly the General shot an arrow at the target. 　
　　The last two lines show what he saw early next morning. To his surprise, he found it was a big hard rock instead of a tiger that bad been hit by his arrow the night before, and his white-plumed arrow sunk deeply in the rock. 　
　　One may ask why the General waited until next morning to see the result. This poetic presentation has been based on two con siderations. One the General who shot with unfailing accuracy was so confident that he belicved the tiger could not escape from his deadly arrow. There fore, he was not in a hurry to see what had been shot .Second, the General could if he wished go into the woods to find out what happened, and then realized the mistake. However, the poetic effects would be less impressive than what he would see next morning. 　
　　An important feature of Chinese poetry is poetic implications. The poem let us imagine what would happen if the general was shooting at a real tiger that night or shooting enemies in a combat, It implies that a strong and heroic general who shoots with deadly accuracy is always invisible in combat.