Ancient poetry (ancient poetry) has a fixed poem and style. Compared with modern poetry, the metrical restrictions of ancient poetry are less. The length can be long or short, and the rhyme is more free and flexible. There are four words, five words, seven words, miscellaneous words and other forms. The ancient poems after the Han and Wei Dynasties are generally dominated by five or seven words, with certain rhyme and inflections.
All ancient poems are classified according to the number of words in the poem. Four-character ancient poems are referred to as four-character ancient poems for short; Five-character ancient poems are referred to as five-character ancient poems for short; Seven-character ancient poems are referred to as seven-character ancient poems for short. Four-character poems were adopted by people as early as the Book of Songs. But it gradually declined in the Tang Dynasty, and few people wrote it.
Five-character ancient poetry is the orthodoxy of ancient poetry, and many people write it. Seven-character ancient poetry is not the mainstream of classical poetry, because it originated late. Therefore, the seven-character ancient style is greatly influenced by the seven-character modern poetry.
Extended data:
China's ancient poems, commonly known as old-style poems, refer to poems written in classical Chinese and traditional meter. They are China's ancient poems in a broad sense, which can include all kinds of ancient Chinese rhymes, such as Fu, Ci and Qu. In a narrow sense, they only include ancient poems and modern poems, and they are a form of cultural expression produced by many ethnic groups in the process of language development. Most ancient poems are written by literati, who express their thoughts by writing poems and singing.
Poetry is the earliest and most fully developed literary genre in China literature. The existing ancient ballads vividly reflect the living conditions and inner wishes of China ancestors, and their short and vivid forms also show the power of China national language.
References:
Baidu Encyclopedia-China's Ancient Poetry