Shi (詩) is the Chinese word for "poem"; it can also be used to mean Chinese poetry other than lyrics, or (most commonly) the classical form of poetry developed in the late Han dynasty and which reached its zenith in the Tang dynasty. Poetry (ancient Greek: poieo = create) is an art form in which human language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or instead of, its notional and semantic content. ... Lyric can have a number of meanings. ... The Han Dynasty (Traditional: 漢朝; Simplified: 汉朝; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Han Chau; 206 BC–AD 220) followed the Qin Dynasty and preceded the Three Kingdoms in China. ... Also the name of a rock band. ...

Origins

From the 2nd century AD, the yue fu began to develop into shi - the form which was to dominate Chinese poetry until the modern era. The writers of these poems took the five character line of the yue fu and used it to express more complex ideas. The shi poem was generally an expression of the poet's own persona rather than the adopted characters of the yue fu; many were romantic nature poems heavily influenced by Taoism. A later variant, the seven-character line, expanded the possibilities of the form yet further. In each case, there is a caesura before the last three characters of each line, producing groupings of two and three or four and three characters respectively. Shi poetry Is poems by the chinese. // Events Roman Empire governed by the Five Good Emperors (96–180) – Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius. ... Yue fu (Chinese 乐府) are Chinese poems composed in a folk song style. ... Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong Hand-painted Chinese New Years poetry pasted on the sides of doors leading to peoples homes, Old Town, Lijiang, Yunnan, China. ... For other uses of the words tao and dao, see Dao (disambiguation). ... This article or section may be confusing for some readers, and should be edited to be clearer. ...

Gushi

The term gushi (古詩 "old poems") can refer either to the first, mostly anonymous shi poems, or more generally to the poems written in the same form by later poets. Gushi in this latter sense are defined essentially by what they are not: i.e., they are not jintishi (regulated verse). The writer of gushi was under no formal constraints other than line length and rhyme (in every second line). The form was therefore favoured for narrative works and by writers seeking a relaxed or imaginative style; Li Bai is the most prominent of these, but most major poets wrote significant gushi. A rhyme is a repetition of identical or similar sounds in two or more different words and is most often used in poetry. ... In non-technical terms, no matter what the context (whether scientific, philosophical, legal, etc) a narrative is a story, an interpretation of some aspect of the world that is historically and culturally grounded and shaped by human personality (per Walter Fisher). ... Li Bai or Li Po (701-762) was a Chinese poet living during the Tang Dynasty. ...

Jintishi

Jintishi, (近體詩) or regulated verse, developed from the 5th century onwards. By the Tang dynasty, a series of set tonal patterns had been developed, which were intended to ensure a balance between the four tones of classical Chinese in each couplet: the level tone, and the three deflected tones (rising, falling and entering). The Tang dynasty was the high point of the jintishi. Wang Wei and Cui Hao were notable pioneers of the form, while Du Fu was its most accomplished exponent. Constrained writing is a literary technique in which the writer is bound by some condition that forbids certain things or imposes a pattern. ... // Overview Events Romulus Augustus, Last Western Roman Emperor 410: Rome sacked by Visigoths 452: Pope Leo I allegedly meets personally with Attila the Hun and convinces him not to sack Rome 439: Vandals conquer Carthage At some point after 440, the Anglo-Saxons settle in Britain. ... Tone refers to the use of pitch in language to distinguish words. ... A couplet is a pair of lines of verse that form a unit. ... Wang Wei (王維) (698 - 761), sometimes titled the Poet Buddha, was a Tang Dynasty Chinese poet, musician, painter and statesman. ... Cui Hao (崔颢; pinyin: Cuī Hào) was a poet of the Tang dynasty in China. ... There are no contemporaneous portraits of Du Fu; this is a later artists impression Du Fu or Tu Fu (杜甫; pinyin: Dù FÇ”; Wade-Giles: Tu⁴ Fu³), also known as Dù Shàolíng (杜少陵) or Dù Gōngbù (杜工部) (712–770) was a prominent Chinese poet during the Tang Dynasty. ...

The basic form of jintishi was the lüshi (律詩), with eight lines. In addition to the tonal constraints, this form required parallelism between the lines in the second and third couplets. The lines in these couplets had to contain contrasting content, with the words in each line in the same grammatical relationship.

Another form was the jueju or quatrain (絕詩), which followed the tonal pattern of the first four lines of the lüshi. This form did not require parallelism.

The last form was pailü (排律), which extended lǜshi to unlimited length by repeating the tonal pattern and the required parallelism of the second and third couplets. Parallelism was not required for the first and the last couplets.

All forms of jintishi could be written in five or seven character lines. The rules on tones and parallelism were not strictly followed in all cases: when classifying poems as gushi or jintishi, commentators traditionally placed greater emphasis on following the tonal rules than on parallelism.

Examples of Tang poetry

On the Guqin zither... The guqin (Chinese: 古琴; Hanyu Pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: ku-chin; literally ancient stringed-instrument) is the modern name for a plucked 7-string Chinese musical instrument of the zither family (中華絃樂噐). It has been played since ancient times, and has traditionally been favored by scholars and literati as an instrument of...

• 「泠泠七弦上， 靜聽松風寒， 古調雖自愛， 今人多不彈。」 "Emotionless the mood of your 'seven-strings'; In the quiet, I sense the cool of the 'Wind through the pines'; I am one who loves the ancient tunes; There are few now who can play them." [Playing the Zither : Liu Changqing, 《彈琴》 : 劉長卿]

• 「主人有酒歡今夕， 請奏鳴琴廣陵客， 月照城頭烏半飛， 霜淒萬木風入衣， 銅鑪華燭燭增輝， 初彈淥稅後楚妃， 一聲已動物皆靜， 四座無言星欲稀， 清淮奉使千餘里， 敢告雲山從此始。」 "Our host brings wine, for merry-making tonight; And bids the guest from Guangling, to play upon the zither; Moonlight bathes the city walls, crows fly mid-air; Frost petrifies ten thousand tress, wind pierces our robes. But the copper stove gleams bright, and candles add their shimmer; First he plays Lu Water, then The Princess of Chu. As the first note trembles, all else falls silent; From the whole company not a word, till the stars begin to pale. The thousand miles to Qinghuai, I was sent by the Emperor's mandate; On such a night I venture to speak of, retiring to the mountains and the clouds." [A Zither Song : Li Qi, 《琴歌》 : 李頎]

• 「獨坐幽篁裡， 彈琴復長嘯， 深林人不知， 明月來相照。」 "Sitting alone, in the hush of the bamboo; I thrum my lute, and whistle lingering notes. In the secrecy of the wood, no one can hear; Only the clear moon, comes to shine on me." [Hut Among the Bamboos : Wang Wei, 《竹里館》 : 王維]

The above poems are from 【唐詩三百首】 Tangshi Sanbai Shou [Three Hundred Tang Poems].