Glory outlasting the Kingdoms divided in Three,
The Fame achieved by this military Figure of Eight:
The running river leaves these stones unmoved,
By-passing sorrow at failing to swallow Wu!
This epigram was written in 766, at about the same time as ‘The Ancient Cypress’ and also at White King, near which there were some great stones in the Yangtse and on its shore, perhaps megaliths from very early times. These were popularly thought (and apparently also by Tu Fu) to have been put there by Chu-ko Liang in order to demonstrate the famous tactical dispositions by which he had won many battles – the stones were in fact known as ‘The Eight Formations’. Like the wheelbarrow, it seems that these tactics were also an invention from before Chu-ko Liang’s own time; though he may have improved on them, and they have always since been associated with his name.
The Three Kingdoms were Shu, Wei and Wu. The Kingdom of Shu once made an onslaught disastrous to itself against Wu. Tu Fu, who was an inveterate sightseer and contemplator of ancient and natural monuments, meditates upon the transitoriness of all human endeavour, even his great hero’s, and upon the waters in the river that ‘all Eastward flow’. The original epigram is in only twenty syllables, in the five-syllable metre that is usually translated by nine in this book.