Poetry developed into the Tang Dynasty and ushered in a highly mature golden age. In the nearly three hundred years of the Tang Dynasty, nearly 50,000 poems were left behind, and there were about fifty to sixty famous poets with unique styles.
The Four Heroes of the Early Tang Dynasty were the main poets in the founding period of Tang poetry. These four heroes are Wang Bo (649--676), Yang Jiong (650--693), Lu Zhaolin (637--689), and King Luo Bin (646--684). Although their poems followed the styles of Qi and Liang, the themes of their poems were expanded in their hands, and the form of five-character and eight-sentence verses also began to be preliminarily finalized by them.
After the "Four Heroes", Chen Zi'ang (661--702) clearly opposed the Qi and Liang poetry styles and advocated the "Han and Wei styles". The 38 "Poems of Encounter" are his representative works with a distinctive innovative spirit. The prosperous Tang Dynasty was the peak of poetry prosperity. In addition to the two great poets Li Bai and Du Fu, there were also many poets with remarkable achievements during this period. They can be roughly divided into two categories: one is the pastoral poets represented by Meng Haoran and Wang Wei; the other is the frontier fortress poets. Among them, Gao Shi and Cen Shen have achieved the highest achievements. Wang Changling, Li Qi, and Wang Zhihuan are also frontier fortress poets. The best among them. Most of Wang Changling's frontier fortress poems use old Yuefu inscriptions to express the soldiers' feelings of missing their hometown and seeking victory through meritorious service. His "Army March" and "Out of the Fortress" have always been regarded as masterpieces of frontier fortress poetry. Li Qi's frontier fortress poems are not many in number, but his achievements are outstanding. "Ancient Meaning" and "Ancient Military March" are his masterpieces. Wang Zhihuan is an older frontier poet. One of his poems, "Liangzhou Ci", expresses the sadness of the expedition's homesickness. Another poem, "Climbing the Stork Tower", is poetic and inspiring. The poetry of the Mid-Tang Dynasty is the peak of the Tang Dynasty. The continuation of poetry. The works of this period mainly showed social unrest and people's suffering. Bai Juyi was the most outstanding realist poet in the mid-Tang Dynasty. He inherited and developed the realist tradition of "The Book of Songs" and Han Yuefu, and set off a climax of realist poetry in literary theory and creation, that is, the New Yuefu Movement. Yuan Zhen, Zhang Ji, and Wang Jian were all important poets in this movement. The main works of Yuan Zhen (779--831) are 19 ancient Yuefu poems and 12 new Yuefu poems. No matter in terms of content or form, Yuan poetry is very close to Bai Juyi's poetry. Their common feature is that the language is easy to understand, which is due to the consistency of their literary views. Although Zhang Ji and Wang Jian did not have clear literary ideas, they became the backbone of the New Yuefu Movement with their rich creations. Sympathy for the suffering of farmers is the theme of Zhang Ji's Yuefu poems, of which "Wild Old Song" is the most famous. Although there are not many poems written by Li Shen whose styles are very similar to those of the above-mentioned people, his two poems "Compassion for the Farmers" have won him a wide range of readers.
In addition to the New Yuefu Movement, there was another group of poets during this period, namely Han Yu, Meng Jiao, Li He and others. Compared with Bai Juyi, their poetry art is more innovative and unique. Han Yu (768--824) was a famous essayist. He was good at turning words into poems. He brought new language styles and compositional techniques into the poetry world, which expanded the field of poetry expression. At the same time, he also brought about the use of words as poetry. Talk about talents and learning, and pursue the atmosphere of danger and weirdness. Meng Jiao (751--814) and Jia Dao (779--843) are both famous for their "bitter chanting". Their common characteristics are the pursuit of adventure and hard thinking and tempering. Liu Yuxi (772--842) was a poet who was interested in creating folk songs. Many of his "Zhuzhi Ci" are realistic and very popular among people. In addition, his verses and quatrains are also famous. Liu Zongyuan's (773--819) poems, like his prose, mostly express personal grief, anger and depression. His landscape poems are graceful and simple in description, showing his noble and noble personality in every aspect. For example, "Snow on the River" has always been recited by people. Li He (790--816) did not follow the path of his predecessors in the image, artistic conception, and metaphor of his poetry. He had a unique style in the mid-Tang Dynasty, and opened up a new world of romanticism that is strange, steep, rich and desolate. "Su Xiaoxiao's Tomb" and "Dream Sky" are all works that fully reflect his unique style.
The poetry of the late Tang Dynasty has a strong sentimental atmosphere. The representative poets are Du Mu and Li Shangyin. Du Mu (803--852) is famous for his seven-character quatrains in his poems. "Jiangnan Spring", "Mountain Journey", "Moving at Qinhuai", "Passing Huaqing Palace" and so on are his representative works.
Li Shangyin (813--858) was famous for his love poems. His seven rhymes follow Du Fu's example, with exquisite allusion and neat antitheses, such as "Mawei" which is very representative; his seven-character quatrains are also very skillful, among which "The Night Rain Sends to the North" and "Chang'e" are masterpieces. In the late Tang Dynasty, a group of realist poets emerged who inherited the spirit of the New Yuefu in the Mid-Tang Dynasty. The representative figures were Pi Rixiu, Nie Yizhong and Du Xunhe. Their poems are sharp-edged and point to the current ills.
The development of poetry in the Song Dynasty was no longer as brilliant as in the Tang Dynasty, but it had its own unique style, that is, the lyrical component was reduced, the narrative and argumentative components were increased, emphasis was placed on description and depiction, and prose syntax was widely used. , alienating the relationship between poetry and music.
The poems that best embody the characteristics of Song poetry are the poems of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian (1045--1105). Huang Tingjian's poetic style was unique and unique, and his influence was wider than that of Su Shi at that time. Together with Chen Shidao, he founded the "Jiangxi School of Poetry" with the greatest influence in the Song Dynasty. In the early Song Dynasty, Mei Yaochen (1002--1060) and Su Shunqin (1008--1048) were both called "Su Mei" and they were the ones who laid the foundation of Song poetry. The poems of Ouyang Xiu and Wang Anshi (1021--1086) played a great role in sweeping away the flashy style of Xikun style.
During the Southern Song Dynasty, when the country was facing severe national calamities, poems were often full of melancholy and anger. Lu You is a representative figure of this era. At the same time as him, there were Fan Chengda (1126--1193), who was famous for his "pastoral miscellaneous" poems, and Yang Wanli (1124--1206), who was famous for his descriptions of scenery and reasoning. Wen Tianxiang (1236--1282) was the last great poet of the Southern Song Dynasty. "Crossing the Lingding Ocean", which uplifted the national spirit of preferring death to surrender, is his masterpiece.
The poetry of the Ming Dynasty moved forward in the back-and-forth between imitating antiquity and counter-imitating antiquity, and no outstanding works or poets appeared. There were many schools of poetry in the Qing Dynasty, but most writers did not get rid of the trap of archaism and formalism, and could hardly surpass their predecessors. In the late Qing Dynasty, Gong Zizhen (1792--1841) broke the silence of the poetry world since the middle of the Qing Dynasty with his advanced ideas and took the lead in the history of modern literature. His poems often focus on social, historical and political perspectives to expose reality, making poetry a critical tool for real society. Later, new poetry schools such as Huang Zunxian (1848--1905), Kang Youwei (1858--1927), Liang Qichao (1873--1929) directly used poetry as a propaganda carrier for the bourgeois reform movement.
During the "May 4th" literary revolution, China's modern literature was born. In 1917, Hu Shi (1879--1942) first published 8 vernacular poems in "New Youth", and proposed the "Great Liberation of Poetry Style" and advocated "Hu Shi's style" poems that are not limited to rhythm, level, and length. In the process of the birth of new poetry, Liu Bannong, Liu Dabai, Kang Baiqing and Yu Pingbo were the main creative forces. Through their efforts, the new poetry has formed the basic characteristics of not having a certain rhythm, not sticking to rhyme, not focusing on elaboration, not elegance, but only pursuing simplicity, and using the vernacular. The earliest published collections of new poems include: Hu Shi's "Attempt Collection", Yu Pingbo's "Winter Night", Kang Baiqing's "Cao'er" and Guo Moruo's "Goddess".