Tang Poems (in simplified Chinese 唐诗)refers to poems written in the Tang Dynasty. The Tang dynasty in China was regarded as the most abundant classical dynasties. Therefore, poems which are well-known nowadays are generally Tang Poems.

Most of the poems in Tang Dynasty were included in the “Full Tang Poems Collection”. However, other collections were established and different versions were found. Among these versions, the most well-known collection which is very famous nowadays is the “Three Hundred Tang Poems.”

In fact, according to the time of the creation of the poems, the Tang poems could be divided into four phrases, namely the Early Period, the Prosperous Period, the Middle Period and the Late Period.

During the Early Period, the Tang poems were mainly about the luxurious life of the wealthy people. The use of words was very beautiful and elegant, but there were not much meaning behind.

During the Prosperous Period, many poets came to be known. Among them, Li Bai is regarded as one of the most famous ones and he had written thousands of poems in different topics. His poems are very elegant and would make people fall into deep imagination. On the other hand, Du Fu was also very famous for writing realistic poems. He wrote a lot of poems about the life of the poor people in that time and in the poems, you would be able to see a lot of fine descriptions and you would feel very angry towards the weak government at that time.

During the Middle and Late period, poems were a bit different from those in the above 2 periods. The structure was more or less the same, but the style was quite different. One of the reasons is that the Tang Dynasty had turned to be weak and more and more people would decide to leave the government and live in some rural areas. Some poets also did that and they discovered that rural areas had a lot of natural beautiful scenery and they fell in love with them and created a lot of poems to praise these views.

Filed under: Ancient China

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