Wang Wei and Meng Haoran were both skilled at depicting natural scenery in five-character lines. The extant works of Wang Wei (AD 701 -761) include more than 400 poems. His landscape and pastoral poems mainly describe his reclusive life and the beautiful scenery in Zhongnan and Wangchuan. Wang Wei was keenly perceptive of nature and always patterned his poems with a painter's craft. Commenting on Wang Wei's works, people often say "there is poetry in his Painting and painting in his poetry." Wangchuan Ji - A Collection of Wang Wei's Poetry shows off the best of Wang Wei's poetics. The language in Wang Wei's poetry is fresh and refined.
Meng Haoran (AD 689-74o) was the first poet to write a large number of landscape and pastoral poems. The existing works of Meng Haoran include more than 260 poems, mostly in five-character lines. Meng Haoran's enthusiasm for describing the beautiful landscape of his hometown-Xiangyang-is infectious in poems like To Zhang ,The Fifth Among his Brothers, When Mounting Orchid Mountain on an Autumn Day and A Song of Returning to Deer- Gate Mountain at Night-where the mountains, trees, crescent moon and boats appear so familiar and sweet under his pen. In poems full of vitality as Visiting an Old Friend on His Farm, the simple life of a peasant family, deep feelings between old friends and the tranquil and harmonious atmosphere in rural areas, all leave an unforgettable impression in a reader's mind. Some of his short poems such as spring Dawn, are also fresh and explicit with a lingering appeal. Although Meng Haoran's poetry does not possess a rich ideological point-of-view as does Wang Wei's poetry, from an aesthetic point of view, Meng may be classed with Wang.
