Liu Zongyuan (柳宗元) (773 - 819) was a Chinese writer living during Tang dynasty. He, with Han Yu and Bai Juyi, was involved in writing spare prose. His essays and poems are imbued with pessimism. A sample poem Liu Zongyuan:
- An old fisherman
- An old fisherman
- An old fisherman spent the night here, under the western cliff;
- He dipped up water from the pure Hsiang and made a bamboo fire;
- And then, at sunrise, he went his way through the cloven mist,
- With only the creak of his paddle left, in the greenness of mountain and river.
- ...I turn and see the waves moving as from heaven,
- And clouds above the cliffs coming idly, one by one.
- Tr. Witter Bynner, cf. [1]