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What made them so great?
That "starts under (their) feet", Li Bai, Mao and Sargent traveled extensively in their youth.
Compare Li Bai's
The Hard Road
Pure wine costs, for the golden cup, ten thousand coppers a flagon,
And a jade plate of dainty food calls for million coins.
I fling aside my food-sticks and cup, I cannot eat nor drink...
I pull out my dagger, I peer four ways in vain.
I would cross the Yellow River, but ice chokes the ferry;
I would climb the Tai-hang Mountains, but the sky is blind with snow..
I would sit and poise a fishing-pole, lazy by a brook --
But I suddenly dream of riding a boat, sailing for the sun...
Journeying is hard,
Journeying is hard.
There are many turnings --
Which am I to follow?...
I will mount a long wind some day and break the heavy waves
And set my cloudy sail straight and bridge the deep, deep sea
With Mao's "The Long March":
The Red Army fears not these prodigious distant campaigns,
A thousand mountains, ten thousand rivers, they look upon as pleasantly usual.
The tortuous Five ranges are but ripples they leap,
The dread crests of Wumeng, mud dumps under their heels.
Warm are the fog-wrapped cliffs lapped by the Golden Sands river,
Cold were the iron chains spanning the Dadu stream.
How much laughter amid the unending snows of Minshan,
And when the Three Armies had crossed, smile were on all their faces.
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