Who Was Meng Haoran? The Tang Poet of 'Spring Dawn' and Li Bai's Friend

Meng Haoran wrote 'Spring Dawn', one of the best-known Chinese poems, and Li Bai admired him. His hermit life, his failed audience and his poems.

Meng Haoran (689 or 691 to 740) was a major poet of China's Tang dynasty, a somewhat older contemporary of Wang Wei, Li Bai and Du Fu. He tried briefly for an official career but spent most of his life in and around his hometown of Xiangyang, in today's Hubei Province, living like a hermit and writing poems about its landscapes. His short poem "Spring Dawn" is one of the best-known Tang poems, and Li Bai, the most famous poet of the age, wrote poems praising him and saying farewell to him. If you are learning Chinese, there is a good chance his poem will be among the first classical poems you meet.

A poet of the High Tang

Meng belongs to the High Tang, the peak era of Tang poetry. He was born in Xiangyang, south of the Han River, and stayed strongly attached to the area and its scenery all his life. The landscape, history and legends of his hometown are the subjects of most of his poems, especially Nanshan, the South Mountain where his family lived, and Lumen Shan, a temple site where he lived for a time in retreat. Because of that retreat, later generations also called him Meng Lumen.

The audience with the emperor that went wrong

As a young man, Meng wanted a political career, but he never secured an official post. A famous story in the New Book of Tang explains part of the reason. His good friend Wang Wei recommended him to Emperor Xuanzong, who granted him an audience. Meng recited a poem, but one line angered the emperor: "The untalented the wise lord discards". Xuanzong took it as a sarcastic complaint that he had not been employed sooner, and Meng was sent away from the palace.

His only quasi-official position came three years before his death, as an adviser to the statesman Zhang Jiuling, and he resigned after less than a year because of his aloofness and pride. Apart from a short trip to the capital Chang'an, where Wang Wei hosted him in 728, he lived in the Xiangyang area almost all his life.

"Spring Dawn": the poem everyone knows

Meng's quatrain "Spring Dawn" (春晓) is one of the most widely known Tang poems. Part of the reason is that it opened the Poems of a Thousand Masters, a beginner's anthology used in elementary schooling since the late Song dynasty. It has only twenty characters:

春眠不觉晓，处处闻啼鸟。夜来风雨声，花落知多少。

In plain English: sleeping in spring, I miss the dawn; everywhere I hear birds singing. In the night came the sound of wind and rain; how many flowers have fallen, I wonder? The words are as simple as everyday speech, yet the poem moves from a lazy waking moment to a quiet question about loss. Chinese critics describe this kind of style as plain on the surface but with a taste that does not fade.

Friendship with Li Bai

Meng was twelve years older than Li Bai, and Li Bai admired him deeply. In 730, when Meng sailed east to Guangling (today's Yangzhou), Li Bai saw him off at the Yellow Crane Tower and wrote the famous poem "Seeing Off Meng Haoran at the Yellow Crane Tower". The anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems includes two poems by Li Bai addressed to Meng, one in his praise and one in farewell.

Li Bai's praise poem begins, in translation, "I love Master Meng, whose free spirit is known to all under heaven". Li Bai honoured his noble character and independent spirit, while Du Fu judged that Meng's poetry surpassed that of earlier masters such as Bao Zhao and Xie Lingyun.

Meng and Wang Wei

Meng is often paired with Wang Wei, because of their friendship and because both were leading landscape poets; in Chinese the pair is called "Wang-Meng". Their styles differ, though. Wang Wei's poems focus on the natural world and the solitude it offers, while Meng's poems look more closely at the foreground and at human life: villagers waiting at a ferry crossing, fishermen, or hermits living in the hills. Critics note that his art lies in turning ordinary daily experiences into lasting poetry.

How later critics judged him

Meng was highly regarded in his own time. Later critics were more mixed. Su Shi, the great Song dynasty poet, compared him to a skilled wine maker with excellent technique but too few ingredients, meaning his style was refined but his range was narrow. In the twentieth century, the scholar Wen Yiduo sided with Li Bai, praising Meng's poetry as a genuine expression of his calm, hermit-like life.

His place in the canon is secure. Three Hundred Tang Poems includes fifteen of his poems, the fifth-largest number after Du Fu, Li Bai, Wang Wei and Li Shangyin. A complete English translation of his poems by Paul W. Kroll was published in 2021.

How did he die?

Meng died in 740. According to the traditional account, the poet Wang Changling visited him in Xiangyang that autumn and the two enjoyed themselves greatly. Meng had a sore on his back that was nearly healed, but after drinking freely and eating fresh fish, the illness flared up and he died. It is a fitting end for a poet whose life was ruled by friendship more than by career.

Learn with Meng Haoran: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to sleep in	to sleep later than usual	On Sundays I like to sleep in.
to see someone off	to go with someone to say goodbye	We saw her off at the station.
a kindred spirit	someone who thinks like you	Li Bai found a kindred spirit in Meng.
off the beaten track	far from busy places	He lived off the beaten track.
to put your foot in your mouth	to say something embarrassing	He put his foot in his mouth in front of the emperor.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a friend you said goodbye to, using "to see someone off" and "a kindred spirit".