anC i e n t-s t y l e Sh i P oe t ry : C on t i nuat ion anD C Hang e s 237the events that unfurl before us, or of grasping the true, quixotic nature of the re-
lationships among things.17
Abruptly, the poet returns in lines 20 and 21 and offers two unadorned five-
character lines that rhyme with neither the preceding nor the following section.
In direct, declarative language, they assert that he loves these mountains and loves
writing songs about them. As when he asserted that he was climbing high (line
16), Li Bai reminds us again that he is a poet, the author of the very poem we are
reading. The poet next glances at the site where another poet and lover of moun-
tains, Xie Lingyun (385–433), had also trod and been moved to write poetry: the
Stone Mirror. Xie Lingyun stands as an inspiration for Li Bai, as a poet famous for
regularly abandoning his official responsibilities to climb the heights. Xie Ling-
yun also stands for Li Bai, who now stands in his place and sees only the moss
that has overgrown Xie Lingyun’s traces: an unambiguous reminder of the past-
ness of the past, the inevitability of his own disappearance—and, perhaps, his own
greatness.
These are the thoughts that trigger, in the final four lines of the poem, a retreat
from the temporal: a simultaneous return to the timeless world of the immortals
and to the (equally timeless) poetic language of the ancients. Assuming again,
once and for all, the role of the seeker of transcendents, Li Bai’s long metamorpho-
sis appropriately culminates inconclusively, atop a mountain that exists beyond
time or place, in the in-between state of desire.
Born just ten years after Li Bai’s death, Bai Juyi, too, was animated by certain
yearnings. Writing soon after the An Lushan Rebellion, a period characterized by
one scholar as one of “disillusionment,”18 Bai Juyi was an outspoken political and
social critic and placed his hopes not in going off to play among the immortals but
in reviving Confucian ideals and thus restoring society to its proper state; and,
very much in keeping with long-held beliefs about the power of poetry, he believed
that the poetic expression of Confucian values would facilitate the achievement of
that goal. While these aspirations are most vividly embodied in Bai Juyi’s develop-
ment of xin yuefu (new Music Bureau poetry),19 his conviction that poetry could
and should be used to transform society permeates his corpus as a whole, in a
language that is even more plainspoken than Chen Zi’ang’s “music of metal and
stone” and yet displays a sensitivity to the value of images familiar to us from the
court poetry tradition.
The following two-poem cycle, “Planting Flowers on the Eastern Slope,” was
written during a period of exile from the capital and is a wonderful example of this
blend. Indeed, not only does it evince the influence of earlier, highly diverse poets
such as Chen Zi’ang, Li Bai, and Tao Qian (Tao Yuanming, 365?–427), but it is
also said to be among the poems that inspired the great poet Su Shi (1037–1101) to
choose Dongpo (Eastern Slope) as his pen name. More personal than a parable, yet
more obviously allegorical than the ancient-style poems of the day, Bai Juyi’s poem
blends the lyrical and the political in a way that would become his signature style.