The Book of Songs is mainly a collection of lyric poems. Since then, China's poetry has advanced along the road of lyric expression initiated by The Book of Songs, and lyric poetry has become the main form of China's poetry.
The enthusiasm of paying attention to reality, strong political and moral consciousness and sincere and positive attitude towards life shown in The Book of Songs were summarized as the spirit of elegance by later generations, which directly influenced the creation of later poets.
In The Book of Songs, the lyrical works with individuals as the main body were inherited by Qu Yuan. "The national wind is lewd and not lewd, and the wind is less angry and not chaotic. If the author of Li Sao has both! " The works of Li Sao and Nine Chapters are full of the tradition of elegance and national style. The characteristics of Yuefu poetry in Han Dynasty and the generous voice of Jian 'an poets are the direct inheritance of this spirit.
The Book of Songs also had a far-reaching influence on the genre structure and language art of China's poems in later generations. The four-character poems written by Cao Cao, Ji Kang and Tao Yuanming directly inherited the four-character sentence pattern in The Book of Songs.