These seventy poems are masterpieces from over a thousand years of classical Chinese poetry. Beauty and simplicity meld to convey an astounding landscape with both enchanting details and breath-taking vastness. The poems constitute an anthology, given to Chinese school children as a text to aid their instruction in Mandarin, and to introduce them to China’s rich literary history.

The poems are considered representative of China’s highest poetic achievements from the Han Dynasty to the Qing. We have striven to mirror the emotional state and the musical values of the originals. We chose to translate line by line, and have eschewed jumbling lines within individual poems.