Play a six-character poem

There are indeed many five-character poems and seven-character poems in ancient times. Relatively speaking, there are fewer four-character poems and fewer six-character poems. Judging from the development of poetic style, four-character, five-character, six-character and seven-character sentences have existed in the Book of Songs for a long time, but the era of the Book of Songs is still dominated by four characters.

By the Han Dynasty, Su Li's poems, nineteen ancient poems and Yuefu poems were mainly five words. Until the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, most poets did not attach importance to seven-character poems. During the Liu and Song Dynasties in the Southern Dynasties, Bao Zhao began to vigorously advocate seven-character poems. In the Tang Dynasty, Wang Changling, Li Bai, Du Fu and others had a large number of masterpieces of four-character poems and seven-line poems, and the seven-line poems gradually rivaled the five-character poems.

Although it cannot be said that there are no six-character poems, the six-character poems have never reached the status of five-character poems, and the excellent works in six-character poems are much less than those in five-character poems and seven-character poems.

In Song Dynasty, Yan Yu said when talking about six-character poems in Cang Hua:

Five words began in Liling and Su Wu, seven words in "Bailiang" in Hanwu, four words in Wangfu, six words in agriculture in Han Dynasty, three words in Xiahou Zhan, Shanxi Province, and nine words in aristocratic townships.

Yan Yu has a great influence in the history of literature, but there is still controversy about "six words originated from Hanson Gu Yong".