ABSTRACT
N ow THAT WE have completed our survey of the principal styles of Yuan Mei's poetry, let us conclude our study with an examination of one of the most important genres of his poetry, his verse about nature. By the fifth century of our era the celebration of nature's beauties had already became one of the principal themes of the Chinese poet, and its importance had not diminished one bit thirteen centuries later in the age of Yuan Mei. Most Chinese critics classify what we in the West simply call nature poetry into two categories, "poetry of the fields and gardens" (tianyuan shi I:f1 I~]-tt,) which we shall term "bucolic" poetry and "poetry of the mountains and rivers (shanshui shi J.J ¥-tt,) or "landscape" poetry. Tao Qian is usually considered the inventor of bucolic poetry with its setting in the Chinese countryside's fields and small plots, while Xie Lingyun is said to have originated landscape poetry, characterized by its descriptions of China's untamed mountains and rivers.1 Much Chinese nature poetry, whether of the bucolic or landscape variety, was inspired by the religious and philosophical ideas associated with Daoism or Buddhism, as well as eremitic Confucianism. Tao Qian wrote of his withdrawal from a corrupt official system to a quasi-Daoist existence in harmony with his surroundings, while Xie Lingyun sang of Buddhist enlightenment in the mountain wildernesses of southern China.2 Countless poets of Tang and Song times continued to explore the connections between nature and philosophy, Wang Wei, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, and Fan Chengda being just some of the more prominent masters of those two dynasties.3
