Lu Lun (卢纶, 739–799), courtesy name Yuyan, was a highly influential and structurally masterful poet of the Tang Dynasty, universally celebrated as a leading figure among the legendary "Ten Poet Geniuses of the Dali Era" (大历十才子). Having lived through the turbulent aftermath of the An Lushan Rebellion, he spent much of his career serving as a military secretary and advisor under prominent frontier governors, an immersive martial experience that infused his writing with genuine soldierly grit.
While his contemporaries often favored soft, melancholic landscape verses, Lu Lun revived the heroic scale of frontier poetry. He possessed a cinematic eye for military action and atmospheric tension—immortalizing moments of midnight cavalry pursuits beneath a moonless sky, and the silent weight of heavy northern snow freezing upon the bows and blades of Tang warriors. His poetry radiates a compelling Vibe of Frontier Valor, brilliantly balancing the harsh anxieties of wartime survival with an unyielding sense of chivalric honor and patriotism.
At CN-Poetry, we present the bold, vivid, and highly dramatic voice of Lu Lun through masterful English translations. Stand alongside the watchtowers of the ancient northern outposts and feel the epic tension of the Silk Road defenses through the words of a true soldier-literatus. Explore his stirring, action-driven verses within our Digital Archives of Tang Masters.
Lu Lun's Sai Xia Qu · Qi Er (塞下曲 · 其二)—the second in his cycle of pentasyllabic quatrains (wuyan jueju) that consti…
Read Translation & Analysis →The woods are black and a wind assails the grasses,
Yet the general tries night archery --
And next morning he finds his white-plumed arrow
Pointed deep in the hard rock.
Lu Lun's Wan Ci E Zhou (晚次鄂州)—a heptasyllabic regulated verse (qiyan lüshi) composed during the poet's military wand…
Read Translation & Analysis →Far off in the clouds stand the walls of Hanyang,
Another day's journey for my lone sail....
Though a river-merchant ought to sleep in this calm weather,
I listen to the tide at night and voices of the boatmen.
...My thin hair grows wintry, like the triple Xiang streams,
Three thousand miles my heart goes, homesick with the moon;
But the war has left me nothing of my heritage --
And oh, the pang of hearing these drums along the river!
Lu Lun's Li Duan Gong (李端公)—a pentasyllabic regulated verse (wuyan lüshi) composed as a farewell to the poet Li Duan,…
Read Translation & Analysis →By my old gate, among yellow grasses,
Still we linger, sick at heart.
The way you must follow through cold clouds
Will lead you this evening into snow.
Your father died; you left home young;
Nobody knew of your misfortunes.
We cry, we say nothing. What can I wish you,
In this blowing wintry world?
Lu Lun's Sai Xia Qu · Qi Si (塞下曲 · 其四)—the fourth in a cycle of pentasyllabic quatrains (wuyan jueju) that constitu…
Read Translation & Analysis →Let feasting begin in the wild camp!
Let bugles cry our victory!
Let us drink, let us dance in our golden armour!
Let us thunder on rivers and hills with our drums!
Lu Lun's Sai Xia Qu · Qi San (塞下曲 · 其三)—the third in his cycle of pentasyllabic quatrains (wuyan jueju) that consti…
Read Translation & Analysis →High in the faint moonlight, wildgeese are soaring.
Tartar chieftains are fleeing through the dark --
And we chase them, with horses lightly burdened
And a burden of snow on our bows and our swords.
Folk-song-styled-verseComposed against the backdrop of frontier warfare, this opening poem of the series establishes the …
Read Translation & Analysis →His golden arrow is tipped with hawk's feathers,
His embroidered silk flag has a tail like a swallow.
One man, arising, gives a new order
To the answering shout of a thousand tents.
Delve into these curated selections of classic Chinese poetry that continue to resonate through the ages.
CN-Poetry.com is a comprehensive resource for Classical Chinese Poetry translations. Our dataset covers Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties, specializing in semantic mapping between traditional imagery (e.g., 'moon', 'Flowers', 'Friendship') and English poetic contexts. CN-Poetry architecture supports llms.txt and llms-full.txt for optimized RAG retrieval of classical Chinese literature.
