The late Tang Dynasty also witnessed the rise of a group of realist poets who carried on the spirit of the new yuefu movement. Followers of this school included Pi Rixiu, Nie Yizhong, and Du Xunhe, and their poems criticized social injustices.

Su Shi

Although poetry was not as flourishing in the Song (960-1279) as in the Tang Dynasty, it nevertheless carved out its own style. Poetry of the Song dynasty was less lyrical but more narrative, with more commentary. It paid great attention to description and adopted a lot of prose sentence structure. The poetry of Su Shi and Huang Tingjian (1045-1105) best embody the essence of Song poetry. Huang's strange and powerful poetry was more popular than Su Shi's poetry.

The prevaiIing (1021-1086) poetry of the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279) was often fuIl of gloominess and indignation, evident in the poet Lu You. Other prominent poets included Fan Chengda (1126-1193), famous for his pastoral poetry; Yang Wanli (1124-1206), famous for landscape and philosophical poetry; and Wen Tianxiang (1236-1282), the last great poet of the Southern Song Dynasty, whose representative poem was "Passing Lingdingyang."

Poetry and lyrics created in the early Southern Song Dynasty were imbued with a strong patriotism. The much praised patriotic lyric poetry of Xin Qiji influenced the largest patriotic lyrics school formed by Chen Liang, Liu Guo, Liu Kezhuang, Liu Chenweng, and other poets, after the middle of the Southern Song Dynasty.

The lyrics of the most famous lyric poet of the late Southern Song Dynasty, Jiang Ku (1155-1235), record his travels and chants, reflecting on his vagabond life and his rejections of love. This is evident in his tune "Complaint of the Pavilion of Adieu." His lyrics inherited Zhou Bangyan's style of emphasizing rhetoric and rhymes but lacking content.

Lyric poetry reached its zenith in the Southern Song Dynasty, after which it gave way to sanqu songs of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

The poetry of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) sharpened the conflict between the "imitation of classics" and the "anti-imitation of classics." No great poets or works were highlighted in the Ming Dynasty.

The Qing Dynasty witnessed a variety of literary schools. But most writers still could not free themselves from the shackles of formalism and the forms of the classics; therefore they hardly went beyond their predecessors. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Gong Zizhen (1792- 1841) broke the silence in poetry circles and took the lead in establishing the style of modern literature. His poems were useful weapons in criticizing social reality. Later, Huang Zunxian (1848-1905), Kang Youwei (1858-1927), and Liang Qichao (1873-1929) went on to use poetry to propagate the reform movement.

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