Blue, blue is the grass about the river
And the willows have overfilled the close garden.
And within, the mistress, in the midmost of her youth,
White, white of face, hesitates, passing the door.
Slender, she puts forth a slender hand;
And she was a courtezan in the old days,
And she has married a sot,
Who now goes drunkenly out
And leaves her too much alone.
By Mei Sheng, B.C. 140
Mei Sheng (美生) was a practitioner of a Chinese form of writing called  Fu , which has no particular analogue in the Western tradition. 
 Fu  would be read aloud, but not sung; it’s probably easiest to call it a kind of rhymed prose, though that description imports Western terminology. 
 Some  Fu  from the Han dynasty: 
 
 “Mei Sheng” is also the name of a panda born in 2003. You probably won’t be confusing the two anytime soon. 
