Song of Eternal Sorrow is a famous masterpiece in Bai Juyi's poems. Written in the first year of Yuanhe (806), the poet served as county magistrate in yi county (now Zhouzhi, Shaanxi). He visited Xianyou Temple with his friends Chen Hong and Wang Zhifu, and wrote this poem because of the story of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty and Yang Guifei.
Song of Eternal Sorrow is a narrative poem with strong lyrical elements. The poet adopted the expressive techniques that China's traditional poems are good at telling stories and portraying characters, and harmoniously combined narrative, scenery description and lyricism, thus forming the characteristic of the poem's lyricism.