A Song of the Southern River
- Poetry of Li Yi

Folk-song-styled-verse

This Tang dynasty poem belongs to the "boudoir plaint" genre, portraying the resentment of a merchant's wife left alone at home awaiting her husband's uncertain return. During the Tang era's commercial prosperity, merchants frequently traveled for business, leaving their wives in perpetual expectation. Such "boudoir plaint" poems generally fall into two categories: missing soldier-husbands and resenting merchant-husbands, with this work being a quintessential example of the latter. The poet employs straightforward language to vividly capture the merchant wife's psychological state, enhanced by ingenious metaphors that amplify the poetic expression.