Since the Tang Dynasty, ancient poems have been divided into two categories: ancient poems and modern poems. Poetry before the Tang Dynasty is called archaic poetry, while poetry after the Tang Dynasty is modern poetry, which is relative to archaic poetry and does not refer to modernity. In addition to rhyme, classical poetry is not restricted by metrical rules, and writing is relatively free; In addition to rhyme, modern poetry must be bound by strict metrical basis, which makes the form of poetry more standardized and musical.
Rhyme is the main factor that constitutes a poem. No matter ancient poems (except a few in the distant generation) or modern poems, rhymes are required, which makes the poems musical, catchy to read and pleasant to hear, and increases the artistic appeal of the poems. When used at the end of some sentences in a poem, words with the same vowels are called "rhyme" and "rhyme foot". Such as "Quchi River" by Lu in the Tang Dynasty:
The faint fragrance is long around the curved pool, and the real mosaic covers the beautiful pool.
I often worry that the bleak autumn wind comes too early, leaving you no time to make up the lotus.
The word "Chi" at the end of the second sentence and the word "Zhi" and "I" at the end of the fourth sentence in the poem have the same vowel, and they are both flat and voiced words with rhyme feet, which are called "flat and voiced rhyme". The first sentence of a poem can be used according to the meter, but it doesn't need to rhyme. The last word without rhyme is a word with sound. In the third sentence, the rhyme is not used according to the meter, but also the vowel.
The following is an example that rhymes with the word "Xusheng", such as The Official Hamster written by Cao Ye in the Tang Dynasty:
The official hamster is as big as a bucket and won't leave when someone opens a warehouse.
The soldiers guarding the frontier have no food, and the industrious people are starving. Who sends the grain from the official warehouse to your mouth every day?
The first rhyme of this poem is "Dou", the second rhyme is "Zou", the fourth rhyme is "Kou", and all three rhymes are "Ou", which is the third sound in the hum. The third sentence does not rhyme according to the meter, and the last word is flat voice.
In addition, the old rhyme is different from the present rhyme. The old pronunciation has an entering tone (basically the fourth tone of modern Chinese Pinyin). If you don't understand it, you will feel that this poem uses rhyme and has no tone. The following is an example of rhyming with old pronunciation words, such as Liu Zongyuan's Jiang Xue:
There are no birds flying over those mountains, and there are no traces of people in those paths.
A boat, a bamboo cloak, fishing alone in the cold snow.
In this poem, the first rhyme "Jue", the second rhyme "Jue" and the fourth rhyme "Xue" are all archaic words with ie and ue as vowels, and the third sentence does not use rhyme according to the meter, so the flat-tone words are used. There is no entering tone in Beijing dialect (Putonghua), so the tone of reading this poem in Beijing dialect is not harmonious: "absolute" rising tone; "extinguish" the sound; The sound of "snow"; Three rhymes and three tones.
If you are interested in learning poetry, you might as well learn the eighteen rhymes of New Rhyme. The new rhyme does not classify the old words into a special category, but classifies the old words into eight rhymes, which is simplified from 106 rhyme to 18 rhyme. Each rhyme is divided into one tone (even tone), two tones (rising tone), three tones (rising tone) and four tones (falling tone). One or two tones are called flat tones, and three or four tones are called soft tones.
As can be seen from the above three poems, all words with the same vowel belong to a rhyme. When rhyme feet are used, the flat rhyme is wider. Both Yin Ping and Yang Ping belong to the flat rhyme and can be used in the same poem. However, generally speaking, phonetic symbols must have the same tone to be used in a poem, either three tones, four tones or old phonetic symbols.
Another thing to understand is that the vowels of Chinese pinyin have the same rhyme head, rhyme belly and rhyme ending, such as eng and ing, ie and ue, en, in and un, and so on. I am a Zen master, and I hope I can help you.