The Summer Palace
- Poetry of Yuan Zhen

Five-character-quatrain

This poem was composed by Yuan Zhen while recalling the desolate scene of the abandoned Shangyang Palace in Luoyang during the Tang Dynasty. Once one of the most magnificent palaces during Emperor Xuanzong's reign, Shangyang Palace became a secluded place where many palace ladies were secretly confined after the Tianbao era, isolated from the outside world for over forty years. The poem vividly portrays these palace ladies who spent long, lonely years within these walls, expressing the poet's sympathy for their fate and his lament over the vicissitudes of prosperity and decline.