He attained a jinshi degree in the imperial examination in 724, but left the capital to live a pastoral life, and composed his most famous poems on nature.
Among his better-known poems are the jueju "On Seeing the Snow Peak of Zhongnan" and the wuyan lüshi [zh] "Rufen bie ye". Book 131 of the Quan Tangshi is devoted to his poetry.
Biography
Zu Yong was probably born around 699, but this is not certain.[1][a] He hailed from Luoyang in modern-day Henan Province.[2] He was a childhood friend of the poet Wang Wei.[3][1]
Zu Yong occupies a prominent position as a nature poet of the High Tang period.[3] In addition to writing about natural scenery, his poems sing the praises of life in seclusion.[3] Thirty-six of his poems survive,[3] and two of his poems were included in the Three Hundred Tang Poems.[4]
The first half of the poem bemoans the solitude and loneliness of the poet's life of farming after leaving court, and then the latter half is filled with love for the new environment in which the poet finds himself.[3]
^"唐詩三百首作者資料與著作檢索結果" [The search results of three hundred author's materials and works in Tang poetry] (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 2003-07-08.
Inoda, Misako (2009). 王翰詩研究 [Research on Wang Han's Poems] (thesis abstract). Sapporo Mandarin Studies (in Chinese). Vol. 14. Sapporo: Hokkaido University of Education. Retrieved 2016-11-06.
