Writers › Writer / Poet
He Xun
Liang-dynasty poet, courtesy name Zhongyan, who served as a bureau secretary to Prince Jian'an and was known for landscape and parting poems, paired with Liu Xiaochuo as "He and Liu".
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 Zhongyan · He of the Water Bureau
He Xun, courtesy name Zhongyan, came from Tan in Donghai and was a great-grandson of He Chengtian. Under the Liang he served as a bureau secretary to Xiao Wei, Prince of Jian'an, and later as record keeper to Xiao Xu, Prince of Luling. About a hundred of his poems survive, among them the plum-blossom poem written at the Yangzhou law office, often cited as an early landmark of plum poetry, and an imitation of the old Green Grass by the River poem preserved in the Yutai Xinyong. Later editors gathered his work as the Collected Works of He of the Water Bureau.
Life and times
Dates c. 468–c. 518 CE (birth sometimes given as 466 or 472; death as 518 or 519)