Han Four Poems For Study

The SiYan Poem (the poem with each line composed of four Chinese characters) is one of the most ancient literary styles in China, which was at its height of power and splendor in the time of The Book of Songs. Ever since, it wasn't active until the XiHan Dynasty when even Sao Style SiYan Poem appeared. These poems inherited the tradition of The Book of Songs and the Qu Odes; meanwhile, it had its own creation and development. It had its time's characteristics in vocabulary, overall arrangement and style and broke away from the bondage of music and the linguistic feature of refrain as in The Book of Songs. Furthermore, the poems had the tendency of the odes' features and the sentences are much trimmer.After the DongHan Dynasty, owing to the increasing social darkness, the Confucian traditional ruling position began to shake, the SiYan Poem changed greatly from content to style.As a kind of orthodox refined poem, the SiYan Poem held a very important position among the JiaoQi songs (the songs which worshiped god and ancestors) in the temple in the XiHan Dynasty and it remained undeveloped after the DongHan Dynasty and became a kind of paeans, which purely praised beauty. Then, owing to the collapse of the Confucian idea, there appeared the lyrics, which broke away from the imitation vogue tied by the classic ideas and became a kind of free verse. In addition, there existed the Xi Han irony poem's comedown in the DongHan Dynasty and the praise and responsion poem rising at the end of the Han Dynasty. These change reflected the process of the SiYan Poem's original dependence on politics and the Confucian idea and its subsequent independence.In the Han Dynasty, the SiYan Poem was also used and penetrated largely in the writings of other types of literature and emerged the alienation phenomenon. They are mainly used in the application articles such as: the foretell verses, the odes, the praise inscriptions etc. The alienation of the SiYan Poem and its utility in other types of literature to develop its different kinds of functions had promoted the shaping and prosperity of other types of literature; at the same time, it had attributed to the improvement of the linguistic arts of the SiYan Poem.