Meng Haoran

Meng Haoran (Chinese: 孟浩然; Wade–Giles: Meng Hao-jan; 689/691–740) was a major Tang dynasty poet, and a somewhat older contemporary of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu. Despite his brief pursuit of an official career, Meng Haoran spent most of his life in and around his hometown Xiangyang of the Hubei Province, while creating poems inspired by its landscapes and milieu.

Meng Haoran was a major influence on both contemporary and subsequent poets of the Tang dynasty due to his emphasis on nature as a central theme in his poetry. Meng Haoran was prominently featured in the Qing dynasty (and subsequently frequently republished) poetry anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems, having the fifth largest number of poems selected for a total of fifteen, exceeded only by Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei, and Li Shangyin. These poems of Meng Haoran were made available in English translations by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kanghu with the publication of The Jade Mountain in 1920. The Three Hundred Tang Poems also collected two poems by Li Bai addressed to Meng Haoran, one in his praise and one written in farewell. Meng Haoran was influential to Japanese poetry.