Observations placeholder

Midnight Songs poetry, also Tzu-yeh Songs, refers both to a genre of poetry as well as to specifically collected poems under the same name, during the fourth century CE.   This is of major significance within the Classical Chinese poetry tradition, finding such practitioners of the genre as Li Bai, as well as importantly influencing world poetry through translations. The Midnight Songs have been much used as inspiration for later poetry.  
Although, traditionally the original set of poems was considered to be composed by a woman ("Lady Midnight") living during the Jin Dynasty, in modern Jiangnan, it is more likely that the Midnight Songs are actually a collection of poems by various poets, and/or from the folk tradition.  The poems are arranged into four sections for the four seasons: spring, summer, winter, and autumn. Thematically, they thus represent four views of the seasons.
According to one count, there are 117 of the poems in the traditional collection.

(SONGS OF FOUR SEASONS)

4 - WINTER

It’s year’s end. Skies are ice-cold.
North wind dances snow into flight.

My dream love’s here beneath quilts,
and the heat of a long hot summer.
 
North wind scattering sleet and rain,
ice on the green lake’s lotus shallows:

it's time radiant hands played clear
through a game of first-snow falling.
 
Where could such kindred hearts join?
On the west ridge, beneath that cypress,

sheltered by four walls of dazzling light,
There, bitter frost will kill us with cold.
 
White snow drifts along Yin ridgelines.
Cinnabar blossoms blaze in Yang forests.

Who needs flute and string? Sounds of
rivers and mountains sing so clear here.
 
Still longing for deep gold~orchid love?
Take a look at forests of pine and cypress,

killing frosts caught up in the treetops.
No other heart in all this year-end cold.