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Su T’ing (670–727) grew up just west of Ch’ang-an and was greatly admired for his prose as well as his poetry. His father, Su Kuei, served as prime minister during the reigns of Chung-tsung (r. 705–710) and Jui-tsung (710–712), and Su T’ing held the same post during the early years of Hsuan-tsung’s reign (712–756). In 720, however, he fell out of favor and was demoted to military governor of Szechuan. He eventually returned to the capital in 724 and was able to live his final years in relative peace. But before he was allowed to do so, he was sent to inspect frontier defenses along the Great Wall in the northern part of Shansi province, which is drained by the Fen River. After coming down from Mongolia, autumn clouds move south across the river while Su, after an equally long journey from Szechuan, crosses it on his way north. The first two lines paraphrase a famous poem by Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 B.C.) of the Han dynasty entitled “Autumn Wind”: “Autumn wind stirs and white clouds fly… aboard a rocking boat I cross the Fen.” In the last two lines Su is not only surprised by autumn but also by the first signs of his own old age—not decrepitude (he is only fifty-four), but the end of his political career and his imminent forced retirement at the end of this, his last mission.

Surprised by Autumn on the Fen

SU T’ING

The North Wind blows white clouds

a thousand miles and across the Fen

the hopes of my heart shudder and fall

the sounds of autumn are hard to bear