The theme of ancient poems is divided into ancient poems (the difference between old and new Yuefu poems). Bai Juyi's modern poems in Xinle Yuefu (the formation of regular poems after the Tang Dynasty requires four quatrains and eight quatrains, and half of the four quatrains are carried forward)
Ancient poems are divided into three categories: ancient poems, regular poems and quatrains, and Yuefu is attached to these three categories; Ancient poems, regular poems and quatrains are divided into five words and seven words respectively. This is a kind of division. The classification of Shen Deqian's Poems on Tang Poetry is slightly different: he did not separate Yuefu, but added the category of five-character poems. Du Fu's poems compiled by Guo Zhida in Song Dynasty can be divided into two categories: ancient poems and modern poems. Now we try to discuss the above three classifications with reference to other classifications.
From the perspective of meter, poetry can be divided into classical poetry and modern poetry. Ancient poetry is also called ancient poetry or ancient style; Modern poetry is also called modern poetry. From the word count, there are four-character poems, five-character poems, seven-character poems and rare six-character poems.
After the Tang Dynasty, there were few four-character poems, so the general poetry collections were only divided into five-character poems and seven-character poems. An ancient celestial body and a near celestial body
Classical poetry is written in the style of ancient poetry. In the eyes of the Tang people, everything from The Book of Songs to Geng Xin in the Southern and Northern Dynasties is ancient. Therefore, there is no certain standard for imitating ancient poetry. However, the ancient poems written by poets are consistent in one thing, that is, they are not bound by the rhythm of modern poetry. We can say that all poems that are not bound by the rhythm of modern poetry are ancient poems.
Yuefu came into being in the Han Dynasty and was originally accompanied by music, so it was called Yuefu or Yuefu Poetry. This kind of Yuefu poetry is called Qu, Ci, Song and Xing. After the Tang Dynasty, the ancient poems written by literati imitating this style were also called "Yuefu", but they were no longer named as such. During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, with the gradual formation of new music, the lyrics of new music appeared, called "Ci". Ci probably originated in the prosperous Tang Dynasty. In the transitional period after the decline of Yuefu and before the appearance of Ci, modern poetry was adopted as lyrics with new music. Wang Wei's Cheng Wei Qu and Li Bai's Qing Ping Diao are both forms of modern poetry.