In the West, Dante Alighieri, exiled from Florence, turned his pain into poetry — crafting The Divine Comedy, a vision of the soul's journey through despair, repentance, and enlightenment. For Dante, words were a bridge between suffering and salvation — between the human and the divine. Centuries earlier, in the heart of the Tang Dynasty, another poet too found his truth amid the burdens of the world. His name was Bai Juyi — a man who believed that poetry should not only delight the literate few, but speak for the voiceless, comfort the weary, and awaken the kind heart.
Tang Dynasty, around 810 CE
The lamps in Chang'an flickered low as Bai Juyi sat before his desk, the ink on his brush half-dry. Outside, the city murmured with distant laughter and sighs — merchants closing stalls, children calling for home, and beggars whispering for warmth.
Earlier that day, he had passed by a bridge where a young woman wept. Her husband, conscripted for endless border wars, had not returned. Bai Juyi had stopped, quietly asked her story, and left with a heart heavy as the dusk.
Now, before the pale candlelight, he began to write:
"The grass grows again each spring,but the traveler does not return."
Each word seemed to breathe — not of grandeur, but of tenderness. The poem flowed like a soft current, carrying sorrow yet refusing despair. When he finished, he placed the brush aside and murmured, "If a poem cannot move the people's hearts, then it is but ink on silk."
Days later, his verses spread across taverns and temples alike. Farmers wept over them, soldiers recited them by firelight, and even the emperor was said to pause in reflection. Bai Juyi's poetry became the conscience of an empire, simple yet piercing, compassionate yet unflinching.
As Bai Juyi's words echoed through the capital, they left behind a quiet understanding — that beauty without empathy is hollow, and wisdom without compassion incomplete. Yet in another night of the same dynasty, beneath lanterns and laughter, a very different voice would rise — witty, sharp, and unrestrained. Du Mu, poet and thinker, would turn conversation into insight, his encounters weaving philosophy through the flicker of candlelight.