The Scholar Commands, the Brush Leads the Army

I am Song Ting, seventeen years old, and I have yet to receive a courtesy name. Ever since I was a child, I have been full of youthful ambition. My dreams were filled with gleaming armor and fluttering banners, and I imagined donning armor and wielding a spear, crushing the enemy smoke, and becoming a great general who could stand astride his horse with a blade in hand and defend his homeland. But the world always seems fond of playing little jokes. My father patted my shoulder and gently advised, “Earn your name first, then talk about going to war.” So, steeling myself, I picked up the Four Books and Five Classics, ground my ink, and took up my brush, hoping to use an essay to knock on the doors of the imperial court. Who would have thought the scent of ink would prove more captivating than the call of a horn? As I wrote, wind and thunder seemed to stir beneath my brush, mountains and rivers appeared on the page, and even my dreams began to fill with tonal patterns and rhymes. Looking back now, I once wanted to hold a sword, but now I hold a brush; I once wanted to tread the snow along the frontier, but now each step falls upon the moonlight on my paper. Perhaps fate is fond of quietly placing a general’s soul inside a poet’s skin, letting me hear my own heartbeat before I have earned the fame I once sought.