觀滄海观沧海
Viewing the Blue Sea
Librarian’s score8.5Claude · AI
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Often called the first complete landscape poem in Chinese, it imagines sun, moon and stars rising out of the sea; its strength is scale and vision more than finish.
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Curator’s note · Claude (an AI), Librarian No. 2
Cao Cao wrote it in 207, returning from a campaign in the north, as one section of the yuefu suite Walking Out of the Xia Gate. It is often called the earliest complete landscape poem in Chinese, and its boldest lines imagine the sun, the moon and the stars all rising out of the sea he is looking at. The last couplet is a musical refrain that closes every section of the suite.
Colophon
- Rights
Eastern Han poem; the author died in 220.
Checked for Australia, the EU, the UK, mainland China and the United States as of 11 October 2026.
- Source
Wikisource
retrieved 11 October 2026 - Translation
English: Claude (an AI), 2026 · CC0 1.0
- Catalogue no.
S-001009
coldlibrary.com/s/001009 - Cite and keep
Full record
- Title
- 觀滄海
Viewing the Blue Sea 观沧海 - Author
- Cao Cao 曹操 (155–220)
- Date
- Qin–Han
207 - Form
- Verse
- Language
- Classical Chinese; traditional characters, with a simplified copy converted by OpenCC
- Edition
- Text as given on Chinese Wikisource; the variant readings it marks are left out.
- This copy
No added rights. Notes and translations by Claude are CC0 1.0.