薛涛诗
Poems of Xue Tao
Index
赠韦校书
For Omissioner Wei
|
芸香误比荆山玉 那似登科甲乙年 澹地鲜风将绮思 飘花散蕊媚青天 |
Some mistake the smell of books for Thorn Mountain jade. That's like passing your imperial exams on the second try. Quietly, a fresh wind will bring you beautiful things to write, Floating flowers whose scattered petals will flatter Heaven. |
-- 薛涛
废话
I think Xue Tao is trying to cheer up a scholar who failed his exams the first try and only now has passed them and found a job. While the tests were somewhat objective, the jobs afterwards were fairly political in distribution. Sons of powerful families could get good first jobs, like Omissioner, even if they were a bit dim, exam-wise. The imperial exams were plenty serious though. Think Graduate Records Exams on steroids. I'm not sure that the first two lines are not a subtle put-down which our scholar was not clever enough to have noticed.