•
– By Zhang Hua (Western Jin Dynasty) The wren is but a tiny bird –Born among weeds and wild grasses,Raised beneath garden hedges.It flutters and gathers within ordinary spaces,Yet its needs for life are fully met.
•
By Li Bai (Tang Dynasty) Seafarers speak of Penglai Isle –Amid misty waves, faint and far, truly hard to find.But the people of Yue tell of Mount Tianmu –Its peaks gleam through shifting clouds, sometimes visible.
•
By Wang Bo (Tang Dynasty) The old prefecture of Yuzhang, now the new seat of Hongzhou.Its stars align with the constellations Yi and Zhen; its land borders Mount Heng and Mount Lu.Girded by the Three Rivers and belted by the Five Lakes, it commands the southern Jing region and links Ou and Yue.Here nature’s…
•
By Su Shi (Song Dynasty) In the autumn of the Renxu year, on the sixteenth day of the seventh month, I sailed with my guests beneath the Red Cliff. A gentle breeze blew softly; the river lay calm without a ripple. Raising my cup to toast my companions, I recited poems of the bright…
•
by Li Mi (Western Jin Dynasty) Your servant Li Mi speaks: I have suffered misfortune since birth and was early visited by sorrow. My father died when I was just six months old; at age four, my uncle forced my mother to remarry against her will. My grandmother Lady Liu, pitying my orphaned and…
•
by Li Bai (Tang Dynasty) Ah! Alas! How perilous, how towering!The road to Shu is harder than scaling the blue sky!
•
– by Li Bai (Tang Dynasty) Don’t you see?The Yellow River’s waters come from the sky,Rushing to the sea – never to return.