The last of
韩愈's four short
杂说 'miscellaneous discourses'. It opens
世有伯乐,
然后有千里马。
千里马常有,
而伯乐不常有 'only when there is a Bole are there thousand-li horses; thousand-li horses are common, but a Bole is rare', and laments fine horses dying unknown in the stable. It is read as Han Yu's complaint about how scholars like himself were passed over.