# Standing high By [duck](https://paragraph.com/@du-ck) · 2024-08-15 --- The river flows eastward, and time flies by. Time has smoothed the mottled arrow marks on the Red Cliff, rusted the millions of Qin terracotta warriors that were buried with Qin Shihuang, and crushed the jade-like face of the ancients who were "as beautiful as the moon and flowers, and as beautiful as the fish and geese"... Only he, calmly and peacefully straddled the long river of history with the posture of an eternal genius, leisurely, letting time fly. In the spring of Yangzhou, the lonely poet strolled in the lonely night. In the night of Yangzhou, the sound of waves in the river surged, one after another. The moonlight on the river in Yangzhou sprinkled with the sound of waves, and the clear light turned the flowers into frost. Spring, river, flowers, moon, night, these five elements merged into a powerful force and hit his heart. He felt that his blood as a poet and philosopher was beating wildly, and the fire of poetry in his mind was constantly bursting out. Without brewing, his "Spring River Flowers Night Moon" was completed in one stroke, and the pinnacle of Chinese poetry was born. "The spring river tide reaches the sea level, the bright moon on the sea rises with the tide, the shimmering waves follow the waves for thousands of miles, where is the spring river without the bright moon." How open, how magnificent. The moon and the sea are naturally integrated in his writing. If ordinary poets had these few sentences, they would have used them to show off and seek fame. But Zhang Ruoxu just smiled indifferently and continued to wield his big pen: "Who first saw the moon by the river? When did the river moon first shine on people? Life has been endless from generation to generation, and the river moon looks the same every year..." For him, writing poems is as common as eating, and every word and sentence comes from the heart. ——His heart is towards the infinite universe. "The sun and the moon pass away above, the body and appearance fade and fall, and suddenly change with all things." Standing at the height of truth, he has thousands of hills and valleys in his heart, and when he gets the time, he will become a masterpiece. Zhang Ruoxu, a military officer in Yanzhou, is known as the "Four Scholars of Wuzhong" with He Zhizhang, Bao Rong and Zhang Xu. This is a few words describing this genius in the Complete Tang Poems. He was too stingy, only concerned with asking questions to the universe and time. He forgot to give back to the secular world with a brilliant article. Perhaps he understood that even if he left his name in history, the words in the history books would eventually lose their vividness as time passed, and the so-called "immortality" was just a small reflection under reality. So, he just looked. Up to the universe, down to the world. He shook his head and smiled after reading Meng Jiao's "The spring breeze is so proud that the horse's hooves are galloping, and I can see all the flowers in Chang'an in one day"; he also looked at Li Bai's "How can I bow my head and serve the powerful and make me unhappy", and sighed with his sleeves... He showed his extraordinary talent and indifference. And all this may be natural, or it may be the inevitability of the genius to understand the mystery too early. Zhang Ruoxu has never been the so-called "poet master" that can be remembered immediately, but he stands on a high place with a posture higher than the "masters", with an indescribable smile, and will live forever with the universe. --- *Originally published on [duck](https://paragraph.com/@du-ck/standing-high)*