The Golden Age Of Chinese Poetry1_______________________________The Tang Dynasty (618-907) was one of the great dynasties in Chinese history. It was a time of ex pansion. At its high point, the country reached as far as Siberia (now part of Russia) in the north, Korea in the east and Vietnam in the south. The Tang rulers also controlled the trade route known as the Silk Road well into present-day Afghanistan.2_______________________________Trade with foreign countries created a tolerant and cosmopolitan culture. Persians, Arabs and Jews came to live in Chinese towns, bringing with them their own religions and customs. They were all owed to live in communities governed by their own laws, and to keep their traditional forms of ent ertainment such as music and dance, which influenced the development of Tang culture. But perha ps the biggest foreign influence came from Buddhism, whose origins were in India. At the same ti me foreigners who were educated at the Tang court took the Chinese culture home with them. Soo n Japan and Korea were organised on the Tang model, while Chinese influence extended througho ut Southeast Asia.3_______________________________Cultural development went hand in hand with technological progress. New discoveries were made in astronomy, geography and medicine. In 724 Seng Yixing measured the length of the sun’s shadow and the altitude of the North Pole. Under Emperor Taizong (627～649) the government opened medical schools where specialist subjects were studied. The inventio n of printing about this time meant that knowledge could be recorded and shared as never before. But it was not just scientific knowledge that could now reach a wider audience. Printing also mark ed the beginning of the golden age of literature－and literature, in the Tang Dynasty, meant poetry.4_______________________________In the beauty of its images and the range of topics, Tang poetry was better than everything that had come before it. But how did this happen? There is no single answer to the question. An explosion of talent, and the appearance of new forms were both important. In the “New Style Verse" which appeared during the Tang period, each line has five or seven syllables, and there are lots of rules which govern the tones.But being able to write poetry was also an important qualification for people who wanted to beco me government officials. A good poet had a better chance of getting a good job. So lots of people became interested in poetry.5______________________________One of the greatest of the Tang poets was Du Fu (712～770). As a young man he travelled a lot and enjoyed painting and music, as well as writing poetry. But during his lifetime he never became famous; in fact, he thought of himself as a failure. It was only in the 11th century that his poetic genius was recognised. Sometimes he is called the “poet o f history” or “the mirror of his time” because he paints a realistic picture of the problems of t he age in which he lived These include the sufferings of the poor, and the corruption of the rich. H e also writes about his own problems, including his son's death. Du Fu is also known for his friend ship with Li Bai (701～762), another great poet of the age. The two men met in 744, and although very different, they bec ame friends. They each wrote poems to the other.6______________________________Li Bai, the son of a wealthy merchant, grew up in Sichuan was not so successful as some of the ot her young men of his time in the Civil Service Examination to become a government official, he b egan a life of travel and poetry, writing more than a thousand poems. He used simple, direct langu age and often chose irregular forms. If Du Fu was realist, then Li Bai was a romantic. He wrote ab out nature and people with the same depth of feeling Friendship, the human condition, and the ple asures of wine, are his favourite subjects. It is said that he drowned when he fell into a river while trying to take hold of the reflection of the Moon.The Power of PoetryReading and writing poetry is a very personal experience. Poets use language as a way of expressi ng their feelings, whether positive ones of love, happiness and hope, or negative feelings like ange r and fear. Poems can describe the beauty of nature, a person, a dream or a memorable event. Most people have tried writing poetry at some time, for example at school. For children, it is a good wa y to explore language and have fun with words as well as to express themselves.Bui teachers and psychologists have found another use for poetry as a form of therapy to help peo ple with problems. There are benefits for people of all differentbackgrounds and ages. Writing poe try can help people deal with changes in their lives, death or feelings of sadness, drug or alcohol pr oblems or serious illness. By writing down your feelings, you can learn to understand yourself bett er and give yourself a voice if you feel you are being ignored. A poem might be a way of telling so meone something when you do not feel able to talk about it face to face. And just because people a re ill or having difficulties in their lives, it doesn’t mean they have lost their sense of humour. Poems written as therapy can be funny too. as laughte r is also considered to be very good medicine.Students at a special school in Dudley, in England, read and write poems every day. Some of the p oems they write are very good, but their reason for writing is not just to be creative. All of them ha ve problems. Some of them have long-term medical conditions, such as cancer, while others have personality disorders or psychological problems. By writing poems students are growing in self-co nfidence. The poems provide a channel through which they can communicate with the world, and express their feelings. They also help them to recognise and explore their problems and to develop a positive attitude to life.But the poems are helping other people, too. The school has collected some of the students’poems and published them in a book which is being sold to raise funds for a local hospital. The bo ok has proved very popular, giving students a sense of motivation and achievement.Poems on the undergroundAnyone who is addicted to reading bus tickets or cereal packets will understand the appeal of Poe ms on the Underground. Some years ago, a few acquaintances who lived and worked in London, who used the Tube and loved poetry, decided that it would be pleasant to read a few lines by their favourite poets as they travelled around by Tube, instead of just glancing upwards at the tiresome advenisements. The Underground had a surplus of advertising space on the trains. They suggested filling the blank spaces with poems, for the entertainment of the travelling public.London Underground approved of the idea, and once sponsors had been found to pay the expenses for half the spaces, they agreed to pay for the other half. So, in January 1986, Poems on the Under ground was officially launched at Aldwych station, in the centre of London. Many of those who le ft the morning daylight and the damp streets above, and descended through the ticket barriers to th e shabby old Underground platform saw the usual signs－TICKETS AND TRAINS, THIS WAY DOWN,CAUTION! DON’T CLIMB ONTO THE LINES,STAND CLEAR, DOORS CLOSING － assume a special literar y significance. There was coffee, doughnuts, and wine too, served on the benches where they woul d usually sit and wait. When the train with a preview of the first poems arrived, everyone got on a nd within minutes of its departure, the carriages were merry with a chorus of voices reading verse by Shelley, Burns and of course, by themselves.The poems look on a new life when they were removed from books and placed alongside the adve rts. Commuters enjoyed the idea of reading Keats’Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold on a crowded Central Line train, or trying to learn by heart a sonnet betw een Hammersmith and Piccadilly. The choice of poems wasn’t arbitrary but specially chosen, It catered for all tastes and included living and dead poems from t he homeland and from all over the English- speaking world, and especially poems which have ass ociations with London.The success of the Poems on the Underground enterprise confirmed that Britain was a nation of po etry lovers. Hundreds of people corresponded with London Underground suggesting poems, or jus t to say thank you. In January 1989, on the third anniversary after the first poems on the Undergro und, London Underground promised to donate all the spaces free, to increase the number available (at least one poem in each train carriage), and to pay for the production costs as well. They also u pdate the poems every few months. Posters of the poems decorate the British Council library throu ghout the world, but the best way to visit the poems is to see them yourself, on which the train yo u choose, in every zone of the network for the price of an underground ticket.The Golden Age Of English PoetryLike China, Britain had a golden age of poetry－but it came a thousand years after the time of Li Bai and Du Fu. It was a time of revolution and ne w ideas in Europe. The English Romantic poets, as they are now known, were very interested in w hat was happening in the rest of the continent.Wordsworth went to France to support the people’s revolution, while Byron died fighting for the independence of Greece against the Turks.But the Romantic poets were more interested in the individual, and in the power of the imaginatio n than they were in politics. They produced wonderful images to express human emotions and to p aint pictures of the natural world. They also got inspiration from the myths of past ages, especially the Greek myths, and from their own experiences of love.Typically, the Romantic poets lived hard and died young. Byron was the most famous of them; he travelled a lot and shocked people with his wild behaviour. Another Romantic poet, Coleridge, wa s probably a drug addict, and the strange journeys of his mind are reflected in his poems. Wordswo rth was the only one who lived to old age. As he grew older he became less interested in political i deas. He went to live in the Lake District, in the north of England, where he wrote the poem I Wan dered Lonely as a Cloud.The most brilliant of the Romantics was probably Keats. Although he studied as a surgeon, poetry was his great love. But when he was just 24 he became very ill. He knew he was going to die, and went to Italy to spend his last months in a more pleasant climate. His friend Shelley, (whose wife Mary wrote Frankenstein), went to Italy to meet him and say goodbye, but he arrived too late. Shel ley himself did not live much longer. He drowned in a boating accident off the west coast of Italy t he next year. In his pocket he had a book of Keats' poems.Young man who never grew oldFrom 1914 to 1918,The First World War took place in Europe and all over the world. Millions of y oung men died in the fighting, the worst of which took place in Northern France. But these four ye ars of suffering and death also produced some wonderful poems. Two of the most famous of the E nglish “First World War Poets”,as they are known, are Rupert Brooke and Wilfred Owen. Theirpoems reflect their horror of war and the waste of young lives.Rupert Brooke was born in 1887. He loved the English countryside and his early poems about Eng lish country life are romantic and full of images of nature. These poems were published in 1911. When war broke out on 4th August, 1914, Brooke went to sea to fight for Britain. At the beginning of the war, the government said that it was “the war to end all wars” and that it would be “all over by Christmas”. This meant that the war should have been quick and not too terrible. Brooke’s poemsreflected the sad but optimistic mood of many people in 1914. In 1915 he was on a ship sa iling to Turkey －but he never arrived, He became ill and died, aged 28. The poem for which he is best remembered is called The Soldier which begins with these famous lines:If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England.Wilfred Owen, born in 1893,joined the army in 1915. His poems describe the physical suffering of men in the “trenches”－ deep paths in the fields in France where the soldiers had to live. He b elieved that war was sometimes necessary, but was also very cruel and he questioned why so man y soldiers had to die. About his poetry Wilfred Owen wrote:“My subject is war, and the pity of war. The poetry is in the pity.”His poems also reflect the mood of anger among many people at the government’s failure to end of the terrible suffering this long war had brought. Bells were ringing to celebrate t he end of the war, on 11th November,1918, when a telegram was brought to Owen’s parents’ house. It gave them the news that their son had been killed in the fighting. That day w as 4th November,1918. If the war had ended just one week earlier, the young man who became on e of England’s most famous poets, Wilfred Owen, might have lived to write for many more years.。