Guo Jing's "Poetry on a Sapphire Lotus Plate", green paper, 29.3 cm in length and 56.2 cm in width, collected by the Palace Museum, Beijing
Explanation:
Taichang Jin presented a banquet to the princes of Hanyuan, and produced a sapphire lotus plate, which was of strange and ancient color. The cup is held on top of the plate, like a lotus pod, with the lower part being the handle and the upper part being the cover. Covered with green and purple seals, at nineteen points, the craftsman cut out the lotus chamber, which is almost unparalleled ingenuity. Dan Yang Guo was asked to compose poems. The poems are certainly not enough to be praised by people, but in the future we may be able to entrust poems to be passed down. The green clouds, pavilions, water and sky are everlasting, and the green cover turns over and falls into the autumn shadows. Wenji fanned her arms and felt the first chill, and the dewy flowers and pearls were falling coldly. The purple stems and green leaves sing the song of autumn orchids, and the smoke is broken when crossing the river. The front edge has been mistaken by the special room, and the blood spots on the guard are still stained. After the koji was solved, he praised it for its strangeness. He rolled it back into the Cangming and offered it for a sip. Taihua Peak is high and the road back is far away, but I feel full of spring. The vulgar eye looks proudly at the glass bell, and the golden lei is useless for boasting. There are only a few ancient poems that are high-pitched and harmonious, and they are intended to call Du Ling drunk. On the day of Xiu Yuan in the early Yuan Dynasty.
Seal "Guo Tianxi". There are 6 seals on the collection: "Yanxi Qingwan", "Nian Gengyao's Lianggong nickname Shuangfeng", "Tang Han's inscription and approval", and "Lu Shusheng's appreciation seal".
According to the inscription of Tang Han in the Qing Dynasty, he first obtained the "Preface to the Collected Works of Guo Tianxi" written by Yu Xilu, and then successively obtained the "Poems of Guo Jingxing and Liang Longji" and "Poems on the Sapphire Lotus Plate" written by Guo Yu, so they were combined into one volume, named "Guo's Poems" "Shihan Volume", and postscripts at the back of the volume to understand the beginning and end. The preface to "Poetry on the Sapphire Lotus Plate" describes the reason for writing this poem: "Taichang Jin presented a banquet to the princes of Hanyuan and produced a sapphire lotus plate." The production of the plate was "almost ingenious", so he wrote a poem to praise it. According to Yu's preface, it was read in August of the fifteenth year of Zhizheng (1355). At this time, Guo Jing had died, "more than twenty years ago." The preface also calls Guo "only fifty-six ears old". Based on this, Mr. Xu Bangda inferred that Guo Jing was born in the 17th year of the Yuan Dynasty (1280) and died in the first year of the Yuan Dynasty (1335). "Poetry on the Green Jade Lotus Plate" was written in the early Yuan Dynasty of Zhizhi, when the author was about 42 years old.
The calligraphy of this poem scroll is in the shape of Zhao Mengfu, and he is the best among the Yuan people who imitated Zhao Mengfu. The structure is appropriately dense, the strokes are vigorous and upright, the stipples are exquisite, the brushwork is skillful, and it has a certain artistic level.
(Writer: Fu Hongzhan)
