Tang poetry browser: 40 poems from the Three Hundred Tang Poems (Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Bai Juyi, Li Shangyin), each with an English title and a short note. Search by title, poet (characters or pinyin), line, or English keyword.
Tang Poetry Browser (唐诗三百首精选)
How to use
Several ways to search
Title (靜夜思), poet (李白, or Li Bai — no tone marks needed), a line (明月光), or an English title word (spring, autumn). Simplified and Traditional both work.
Read the poem
Each entry shows the anthology's text, the poet's name in pinyin, an English title and a short note. 將進酒, 長恨歌 and 琵琶行 are long, so only excerpts are shown, and they are marked as such.
Browse all 40
All 40 poems are listed below, in period order: Early, High, Mid and Late Tang.
Share
Copy a line or take a screenshot — for teaching, social media or a reading group.
What the Three Hundred Tang Poems is
《唐詩三百首》 ("Three Hundred Tang Poems") is an anthology compiled by the Qing scholar Sun Zhu (蘅塘退士), by tradition around 1763. His preface says he chose from the Tang poems everyone knew, "some tens of poems in each form, three hundred and some in all", to replace the 千家詩, the primer village schools were using. So the title says three hundred and the compiler says three hundred and some; the two digital editions we counted (Wikisource and chinese-poetry) both hold 320, and printed editions vary. This tool shows 40 of them.
Who takes up the most room
The anthology leans on a few names. Du Fu has 39 poems, Li Bai 34, Wang Wei 29 and Li Shangyin 24 — 126 of the 320 between them. Bai Juyi, who left more poems than any other Tang poet, has 6, two of them the long 長恨歌 and 琵琶行. By custom Li Bai is the "Poet Immortal", Du Fu the "Poet Sage", Wang Wei the "Poet Buddha" and Bai Juyi the "Poet Demon".
"Read the Three Hundred Tang Poems well, and you'll recite verse even if you cannot compose it." — a saying, quoted in Sun Zhu's preface with 諺云, "as the saying goes" (Wikisource)
Four periods, and who drew them
Tang poetry is usually divided into four periods: Early Tang (618-712, Chen Zi'ang, Wang Bo), High Tang (713-765, Li Bai, Du Fu, Wang Wei, Meng Haoran), Mid Tang (766-835, Bai Juyi, Liu Yuxi, Liu Zongyuan) and Late Tang (836-907, Du Mu, Li Shangyin). This page's Period column follows it, but it is a later convention: the editors of the 1707 Complete Tang Poems say in the imperial preface that they dropped the four labels, calling them names later readers had imposed. Where the boundaries fall also varies by scholar.
Where the texts come from
The poems are the 唐詩三百首 from the open chinese-poetry dataset (MIT licence, © 2016 JackeyGao), with its Simplified-to-Traditional conversion errors corrected against Wikisource. The Simplified text is converted with OpenCC; the English titles and notes are ours. To find a whole poem from one line, or to search all 320 and the 千家詩, use the Chinese Poetry Line Search.
The Three Hundred Tang Poems is more than three hundred
The 1707 imperial preface to the Complete Tang Poems (全唐詩) records "48,900-odd poems by 2,200-odd people". A later recount by the Japanese scholar Hiraoka Takeo came to 49,403 poems plus 1,555 fragments, by 2,576 authors.
The compiler of the Three Hundred Tang Poems says only "three hundred and some" in his preface. The two digital editions we counted, Wikisource and chinese-poetry, both hold 320; printed editions vary.
The Quiet Night Thoughts children learn reads 床前明月光 … 舉頭望明月. The 1707 Complete Tang Poems prints 牀前看月光 … 舉頭望山月. The version everyone recites is the anthology's.
The Ming critic Hu Yinglin called Du Fu's "Climbing High" the finest seven-character regulated poem ever written. All four couplets are parallel; lines 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8 rhyme.
By our count of the Complete Tang Poems, Bai Juyi has about 2,609 titles to his name, more than any other Tang poet, and the anthology takes 6 of them. Wang Wei has 341, and 29 are in.
Du Fu's "Eight Immortals of the Wine Cup" says 李白一斗詩百篇 — "Li Bai, one peck of wine, a hundred poems". The familiar 斗酒詩百篇 is a later shorthand.
The anthology leans on a few names: Du Fu 39, Li Bai 34, Wang Wei 29 and Li Shangyin 24 — 126 of 320 poems, about 39%. Thirty-five poets appear only once.
"Song of Everlasting Sorrow" (Bai Juyi) runs 120 lines and 840 characters — the longest poem in the anthology. The next longest is Bai Juyi's "Song of the Pipa".
Where "Night Mooring by Maple Bridge" has 江楓漁火 ("fishing fires"), the Complete Tang Poems has 江楓漁父 ("fisherman"), noting the variant 火; where "Yellow Crane Tower" begins with the yellow crane, it has 白雲 ("white clouds"). The same poem reads differently from book to book.
The 320 are about 0.65% of the 48,900-odd poems in the Complete Tang Poems — roughly one Tang poem in every 153.
Frequently Asked Questions
40, all from the Three Hundred Tang Poems — which holds 320 in both digital editions we counted.
The Qing scholar Sun Zhu (蘅塘退士), by tradition around 1763. His preface says he took "some tens in each form" from the Tang poems everyone knew, as a textbook for a family school.
By custom, the four greats: Li Bai (Poet Immortal), Du Fu (Poet Sage), Wang Wei (Poet Buddha), Bai Juyi (Poet Demon). Other essentials: Li Shangyin, Du Mu, Liu Yuxi, Liu Zongyuan.
5-char = 5 characters per line (Quiet Night Thoughts, Climbing Stork Tower). 7-char = 7 per line (Climbing High, Yellow Crane Tower). Quatrains have 4 lines, regulated verse 8; old-style poems such as Bring in the Wine are freer in both.
No line-by-line translations. Each entry has an English title and a short note, and the poet's name in pinyin. For full translations, see Burton Watson or Stephen Owen.
(1) Form: the metre, tones and parallelism of regulated verse settled in the Tang. (2) Range: landscape, pastoral, frontier, love, social critique. (3) Familiarity: much of the classical verse people still recite and quote is Tang.
The texts are the 唐詩三百首 from the open chinese-poetry dataset (MIT licence, © 2016 JackeyGao), with its conversion errors corrected against Wikisource; the Simplified text is converted with OpenCC. English titles and notes are by RECATOOLS.
Yes. Students can pick the poem that moves them most, screenshot it and discuss it — the pinyin names, English titles and notes all help.
Yes, with the Chinese Poetry Line Search: it holds all 320 of the Three Hundred Tang Poems plus the 千家詩, and finds a whole poem from a line, title or author.
Yes. All RECATOOLS tools are 100% free, ad-supported.
Pick up where you left off
Stored only in this browser — never sent to our servers.