Sikong Shu or Ssü-k'ung Shu (; – ) was a Chinese poet of the

Tang dynasty The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, c=唐朝), or the Tang Empire, was an Dynasties of China, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907, with an Wu Zhou, interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dynasty and followed ...

. Three of his poems were included in the popular anthology ''

Three Hundred Tang Poems The ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' is an anthology of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty (618–907). It was first compiled around 1763 by Sun Zhu (1722–1778Yu, 64–65), who was a Qing Dynasty scholar and was also known as Hengtang Tuishi (, ...

''. Sikong was known as one of the "Ten Poets of Talent of the Dali period" (766–779), which was

Emperor Daizong of Tang Emperor Daizong of Tang (11 November 726According to Daizong's biography in the ''Old Book of Tang'', he was born on the 13th day in the 12th month of the 14th year of the Kaiyuan era of Tang Xuanzong's reign. This date corresponds to 11 Nov 72 ...

's third and final regnal period.

Biography

The year of Sikong Shu's birth is not known. He was a native of what is now Guangping County, of

Hebei Hebei is a Provinces of China, province in North China. It is China's List of Chinese administrative divisions by population, sixth-most populous province, with a population of over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. It bor ...

Province, China. He was moderately successful in his career as a governmental official.Davis, xii

Name

"Sikong" is a

Chinese compound surname A Chinese compound surname is a Chinese surname using more than one character. Many of these compound surnames derive from Zhou dynasty Chinese noble and official titles, professions, place names and other areas, to serve a purpose. Some are or ...

Poetry

Sikong Shu's poems as collected in ''Three Hundred Tang Poems'' were translated by

Witter Bynner Harold Witter Bynner (August 10, 1881 – June 1, 1968), also known by the pen name Emanuel Morgan, was an American poet and translator. He was known for his long residence in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and association with other literary figures ther ...

as: * "A Farewell to Han Shen at the Yunyang Inn" * "When Lu Lun my Cousin Comes for the Night" * "To a Friend Bound North After the Rebellion"

References

Works cited

*Davis, A. R. (Albert Richard), Editor and Introduction (1970), ''The Penguin Book of Chinese Verse''. (Baltimore: Penguin Books). *

External links

* Books of the ''

Quan Tangshi ''Complete Tang Poems'' (or ') is the largest collection of Tang poetry, containing some 49,000 lyric poems by more than twenty-two hundred poets. In 1705, it was commissioned at the direction of the Qing dynasty Kangxi Emperor and published un ...

'' at the

Chinese Text Project The Chinese Text Project (CTP; ) is a digital library project that assembles collections of early Chinese texts. The name of the project in Chinese literally means "The Chinese Philosophical Book Digitization Project", showing its focus on books ...