Poetry
Han Wudi was a patron of literature, who has a number of poems attributed to him. As to poetry, there is general agreement that some of the pieces which have been attributed to him are beautiful and wonderful pieces, particularly those on lost love: there is less agreement on whether these pieces were actually composed by him. The following work is on the death of Li Furen, one of his favorite concubines/wives.
The sound of her silk skirt has stopped.
On the marble pavement dust grows.
Her empty room is cold and still.
Fallen leaves are piled against the doors.
How can I bring my aching heart to rest?
Read more about this topic: Emperor Wu Of Han
Famous quotes containing the word poetry:
“Most people ignore most poetry
because
most poetry ignores most people.”
—Adrian Mitchell (b. 1932)
“The earth is not a mere fragment of dead history, stratum upon stratum like the leaves of a book, to be studied by geologists and antiquaries chiefly, but living poetry like the leaves of a tree, which precede flowers and fruit,—not a fossil earth, but a living earth; compared with whose great central life all animal and vegetable life is merely parasitic.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Poetry, whose material is language, is perhaps the most human and least worldly of the arts, the one in which the end product remains closest to the thought that inspired it.... Of all things of thought, poetry is the closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art ...”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)