Writers › Writer / Poet
Ye Shaoweng
Southern Song poet of the Rivers and Lakes school whose 'Visiting a Garden in Vain' is famous for its spray of red apricot over the wall.
In a study at night, a desk holds a brush pot, a porcelain vase with a plum branch, a lit red lantern, a folded fan and an unrolled blank scroll, with no one seated there, while through a round window the moon rises over a lake with a sailboat.
Also known as Zi Sizong · Hao Jingyi
- Roles
- Writer / Poet
Ye Shaoweng, courtesy name Sizong, from Pucheng in Jian'an, was born into the Li family and lived in the mid-to-late Southern Song, holding minor court posts before retiring for many years beside West Lake in Hangzhou. A representative poet of the Rivers and Lakes school, he left the poetry collection Jingyi Xiaoji and the miscellany Sichao Wenjian Lu on four Song reigns. His 'Visiting a Garden in Vain', with its 'spray of red apricot reaching over the wall', is one of the most quoted Song quatrains.
Life and times
- UnknownBorn
Songlived in the mid-to-late Southern Song - UnknownDied
Works
Literature · Poetry1- Visiting a Garden but Finding No One HomeSongYe Shaoweng's quatrain on a locked garden whose spring spills over the wall in apricot blossom
- Literature · Sayings1
- A Red Apricot Branch Over the WallSongIdiom from Ye Shaoweng's garden poem: first spring's exuberance, later a wife's infidelity