Gao Shi (7-765), whose name is Duff, had a hard childhood. In kaiyuan, he went to Chang' an to seek an official position, but there was no result. During the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan (73) to the twenty-first year (733), Gao Shi went north to Jimen twice and wandered around Yanzhao, hoping to join the army and frontier fortress, but with no result. In the eighth year of Tianbao (749), he was awarded the title of Qiu Wei. Three years later, he abandoned his official position and joined the Koshuhan shogunate, our envoy to Hexi, as secretary. The Anshi Rebellion, when Gao Shi was 57 years old, was prosperous. It was said that "since the Tang Dynasty, the poet's achievement was only suitable." (The Book of the Old Tang Dynasty) Among the Tang poets who often compare themselves to princes, he is the only one who achieved high office and sealed the princes.
Gao Shi's frontier poems were mostly written during his trip to Jibei and his entry into Hexi Shogunate, and his representative work was Yan Ge Xing:
the northeastern border of China was dark with smoke and dust, to repel the savage invaders, our generals, leaving their families. Strode forth together, looking as heroes should look, and having received from the Emperor his most gracious favour. They marched to the beat of gong and drum through the Elm Pass, they circled the Stone Tablet with a line of waving flags. Till their captains over the Sea of Sand were twanging feathered orders, the Tartar chieftain's hunting-fires glimmered along Wolf Mountain. And heights and rivers were cold and bleak there at the outer border, but soon the barbarians' horses were plunging through wind and rain. The soldiers were killed in the first half, and still at the camp beautiful girls dance for them and sing. The desert is full of grass in autumn, the few surviving watchers by the lonely wall at sunset. You despise your enemy when you meet him, and yet, for all that they have done, Elm Pass is still unsafe. Still at the front, iron armour is worn and battered thin, Yumi should crow after parting. Still in this southern city young wives' hearts are breaking, while soldiers at the northern border vainly look toward home. The fury of the wind cuts our men's advance, in a place of death and blue void, with nothingness ahead. Three times a day a cloud of slaughter rises over the camp, and all night long the hour-drums shake their chilly booming. Until white swords can be seen again, spattered with red blood, when death becomes a duty, who stops to think of fame. Yet in speaking of the rigours of warfare on the desert, we name to this day Li, the great General, who lived long ago.
This poem not only commends the heroic spirit of a man who thinks he can run amok all over the world, but also deeply sympathizes with the sufferings brought by the war to the conscript's family. On the one hand, it is a celebration of "the life and death of the soldiers in the first half", on the other hand, it is a dissatisfaction with the general "and still at the camp beautiful girls dance for them and sing". The author does not deny the hardships of the campaign, but the whole poem does not lose the high-pitched tone of vigorous enthusiasm; The contrast between suffering and sublimity adds to the generosity and tragedy of going out to the fortress. Therefore, although the poems are often used in pairs, they are fluent in rhetoric, which fully shows the solemn and vigorous style characteristics of Gao Shi's poems.