Yuefu is a permanent music management institution in the former court of Emperor Ai of the Western Han Dynasty, in charge of the music used by the emperor and the court at ordinary times. During the period of Emperor Wu of Han Dynasty, the function of Yuefu was further strengthened. In addition to organizing literati to create songs and poems for the court, Yuefu also collected local songs extensively and became an official poetry collection institution. Yuefu poetry in the two Han dynasties refers to the poems collected, preserved and handed down by the royal Yuefu system or the music management organ equivalent to Yuefu function, among which the essence is undoubtedly the poems collected from the people. Most Yuefu folk songs are "from sadness to joy" (Hanshu. Literature and art), but also shows the sensitive issues that people are generally concerned about, telling the bitterness and joy, love and hate at that time, and the attitude towards life and death. Yuefu folk songs profoundly reflected all aspects of social life in the Han Dynasty and the mentality, wishes and demands of the working people at that time. Judging from the form of expression and artistic style, it is also frank, simple, straightforward and highly colloquial. Grieving for the Past, A Journey to the Orphan, A Journey to the Sick Woman and A Journey to the East Gate all well embody these characteristics. Shang Mo Sang and Peacock Flying to the Southeast are masterpieces in the poems of Han Yuefu, as well as masterpieces of ancient narrative poems. Yuefu poems in the two Han Dynasties played a positive role in promoting the changes in the form of ancient poems in China, and realized the transition from four-character poems to miscellaneous poems and five-character poems.
After entering the Eastern Han Dynasty, literati's poetry creation presented a new situation. Five words replaced the traditional four words as a new poetic style, and a complete seven-character poem began to appear. Most of the poems of literati in the Eastern Han Dynasty are independent articles, and some of them are attached to the end of Fu, which has been preserved as a part of Fu. The earliest known five-character poem of literati is Ban Gu's Ode to an Epic. Zhang Heng's Four Sorrow Poems are seven-character poems formed after the neat style of Sao, and have become the initial form of seven-character poems. In addition, Qin Jia's three female poems are the symbol of the maturity of the five-character lyric poems of the Eastern Han literati. Some authors of five-character poems written by scholars in the Eastern Han Dynasty are clear, but quite a few of them have no names. Nineteen Ancient Poems was written by literati in Han Dynasty, but the author's name was not left. It represents the highest achievement of literati's five-character poems in the Han Dynasty, and its basic content is to express wandering feelings and worries about women's boudoir. For example, Picking hibiscus on the River, Beautiful Moon and Green Grass have universal and typical significance in ancient China, which has aroused readers' wide popularity for thousands of years. Nineteen Ancient Poems is a model of ancient lyric poetry, which is good at lyric, but it is not simple and direct expression, but tactfully repeated; Its language has also reached the level of perfection, and Zhong Rong's poems call it "thrilling, which can almost be described as a word of gold".