Border Song, IV: The Victory Banquet
塞下曲六首·其四
Sài xià qǔ liù shǒu · qí sì
A field banquet celebrates a returning army with guests, armored dancing, and drums. Follow the festive movement as it seems to shake the landscape.
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Read the original and its translation together. Open a line’s word meanings for a closer look.
About the text and pronunciation
The simplified view changes character forms, not the edition. Notes and sources retain the cited text.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Word by word, in the order of the line. A gloss is a crib. It is not the translation.
Word meanings — Line 1
- 野 yě field
- 幕 mù tent
- 蔽 bì shelters
- 瓊 qióng fine
- 筵 yán banquet
Word meanings — Line 2
- 羌 qiāng Qiang
- 戎 róng Rong
- 賀 hè congratulate
- 勞 láo service
- 旋 xuán return
Word meanings — Line 3
- 醉 zuì drunk
- 和 hé with
- 金 jīn golden
- 甲 jiǎ armor
- 舞 wǔ dance
Word meanings — Line 4
- 雷 léi thunder
- 鼓 gǔ drums
- 動 dòng shake
- 山 shān mountains
- 川 chuān rivers
English translation by PoemWell.
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Original
野幕蔽瓊筵，
羌戎賀勞旋。
醉和金甲舞，
雷鼓動山川。
Translation
A field tent shelters a splendid banquet;
Qiang and Rong guests celebrate the return from service.
Drunk, they dance in their gleaming armor;
thunderous drums set mountains and rivers trembling.
Try it from memory
After reading, recall the underlined word or phrase in each line. Say its meaning before opening the answer. These prompts use the text edition printed above.
-
Line 1 · What does the marked word mean?
野幕蔽瓊筵，
Pronunciation hint
bì
Reveal meaning and translation
蔽 — shelters
A field tent shelters a splendid banquet;
-
Line 3 · What does the marked word mean?
醉和金甲舞，
Pronunciation hint
jīn
Reveal meaning and translation
金 — golden
Drunk, they dance in their gleaming armor;
-
Line 4 · What does the marked word mean?
雷鼓動山川。
Pronunciation hint
dòng
Reveal meaning and translation
動 — shake
thunderous drums set mountains and rivers trembling.
One more question: what changes?
Compare the opening and closing lines. What changes in the scene, the speaker’s attention, or the feeling? Choose a Chinese word as evidence, then compare your reading with the notes. More than one answer may be reasonable.
Line-by-line notes →Self-check at your own pace. No score or progress is saved. Open only the answers you want included when printing.
Line-by-line notes
Lines 1–2 · The gathering under cover
野幕 is the field tent that covers the banquet, so 蔽 becomes “shelters.” 瓊 lends the meal the splendor of jade, carried in English by “splendid.” 羌戎 names participants in the frontier vocabulary of the poem. 賀 puts the emphasis on celebration, and 旋 tells us it marks a return. The brief couplet makes that return communal before anyone is seen dancing.
Lines 3–4 · The tent can no longer contain the sound
和 is hé, “with,” in the reading used here. The armor stays on the dancers, bringing military equipment into the celebration. Compare that with the feathers and banner in the first Border Song. 雷 makes the drums thunderous, and 動 extends their effect to 山川, mountains and rivers. The field tent that set the bounds in the first line feels small beside what the drums can reach.
Form and tone
This complete five-character quatrain expands outward: from tent and banquet to dancers, then to mountains and rivers. Its final verb 動 carries the dancers’ movement into the landscape. The sound answers the massed shout in the first poem of the sequence.
See jueju for the larger formal pattern. Pinyin gives modern Mandarin pronunciation; a historical level/oblique grid is not inferred from those modern tones.
Historical context
The fourth Border Song presents communal celebration after martial service. It can be read beside the pursuit poem to see how the sequence ranges across different phases of military life. Nothing in the four lines identifies a specific victory or proves that the depicted banquet occurred as described.
Continue with Lu Lun and the frontier reading path. Compare Border Song, I: The New Command and Drinking Alone beneath the Moon using the reading connections below.
Sources
樂府詩集/093卷 — Chinese text. Checked against the linked Wikisource transcription. The displayed traditional text follows this reading. Punctuation and line breaks are editorial. Translation, glosses, and reading notes are original to PoemWell.
English translation, gloss, and notes by PoemWell. The translation is original to this site.
The Chinese source is shown in traditional characters by default, with a simplified view available. Pinyin is modern standard Mandarin, a reading aid, not Tang or Song pronunciation.
Updated .
Cite this reading
Lu Lun. “Border Song, IV: The Victory Banquet” (塞下曲六首·其四). PoemWell. English translation by PoemWell. Updated .
https://poemwell.org/poems/border-song-lu-lun-four
Credit the poet for the Chinese original and PoemWell for this translation and commentary. Use the permanent page link above; source editions are listed separately.