Writers › Writer / Poet

Wei Yingwu

Mid-Tang landscape poet and Prefect of Suzhou whose limpid verse ranks him with Wang Wei, Meng Haoran and Liu Zongyuan.

Also known as Wei Suzhou · Wei Jiangzhou · Wei Zuosi

Wei Yingwu, a native of Chang'an, served Emperor Xuanzong as a palace guard in his youth before turning to study, and later governed Chuzhou, Jiangzhou and Suzhou, earning the name 'Wei of Suzhou'. His landscape and pastoral poetry is plain in diction yet lofty in mood, and later critics grouped him with Wang Wei, Meng Haoran and Liu Zongyuan. 'West Stream at Chuzhou', with its unmanned ferry boat drifting crosswise, is among his best-known poems.

Life and times

  1. c. 737 CEBornTang
  2. c. 792 CEDied

Works

  1. Literature · Poetry10
    1. West Stream at ChuzhouTangWei Yingwu's quatrain as prefect of Chuzhou: a spring-swollen stream and an empty ferry
    2. Reply to Li HuanTangWei Yingwu answers a friend in Chu with his quiet days: reading the Changes, watching gulls
    3. Sent to Vice Director Qiu on an Autumn NightTangWei Yingwu walks on an autumn night and pictures his hermit friend awake as pine cones fall
    4. Meeting Feng Zhu in Chang'anTangWei Yingwu's old-style poem on meeting his friend Feng Zhu in Chang'an one spring
    5. To a Daoist in the Mountains of QuanjiaoTangWei Yingwu, alone in his cold office, thinks of a Daoist hermit lost in the autumn hills
    6. +5 more
      1. On the Huai, Glad to Meet an Old Friend from LiangchuanTangWei Yingwu's regulated poem on meeting an old friend by the Huai after ten years apart
      2. Stopping at Xuyi County at DuskTangWei Yingwu moored at a Huai River post station, homesick at the sound of the night bell
      3. Setting Out from Yangzi: To Collator Yuan the EldestTangWei Yingwu sails from Yangzi for Luoyang and writes to a friend of parting and life's drift
      4. On the Set Theme of Evening Rain, Seeing Off Li ZhouTangWei Yingwu's parting poem on the theme of evening rain, where drizzle and tears become one
      5. Sent to Li Dan YuanxiTangWei Yingwu writes to a friend of spring sorrow, illness, homesickness and an official's shame
  2. Literature · Sayings1
    1. The Deserted Country FerryTangFamous line from Wei Yingwu's West Stream at Chuzhou: an empty boat at a lonely ferry