The six Chinese poets who are represented in this anthology are all medieval and date from the seven hundred years following the beginning of the Three Kingdoms in 220 A.D. They are not therefore contemporaries, nor do they form a school. They share a mood, subtle and infinitely variable, that gives them each a place in this collection. We are inclined to forget that the Chinese poet is always a civil servant, a diplomat, or a public figure. With...

The poems cover a wide range of subjects : the conventional lament on the shortness of life, bitter complaints about poverty, avarice, and pride, accounts of the difficulty of official life under a bureaucratic system, attacks on the corrupt Buddhist clergy and the foolish attempts of the Taoists to achieve immortal life, incomparable descriptions of the natural world in the mountain retreat. When Han-shan speaks of Cold Mountain, he means himself,...

Presents classic Chinese tales of love and morality, marriage and justice, and the strange and supernatural.