Poem on beautiful ladies

Born into a minor gentry family in Kaifeng, Henan Province, Zhou Lianggong was raised in the cosmopolitan surroundings of Nanjing, the southern capital of the Ming dynasty and a major center of literati culture. Earning his "presented scholar" (jinshi) degree in 1641, Zhou loyally served the Ming dynasty until its collapse in 1644, after which he accepted an official post under the Manchu Qing dynasty.

Zhou was an avid patron of contemporary artists-including a number of Ming loyalists-collecting their works and chronicling their lives in his Record of Paintings Viewed (Du Hua Lu, 1673), which gives short biographical sketches of seventy-eight painters. He also formed an important collection of ancient and modern seals.

Zhou's interest in archaic scripts is revealed in his distinctive writing style, which also reflects the later seventeenth-century taste for the bizarre and idiosyncratic. Here, Zhou has transcribed one of his poems in a formal regular script with exaggerated diagonals and stiff rectilinear forms that recall the monumental characters carved
into Six Dynasties (220–589) stone steles.

In Zhou's poem the imagery of thwarted romance serves as a metaphor for the frustrated ambitions of the loyal official pursuing recognition and rank:

[The lovely ladies] Peach Root and Peach Leaf
need not urge me,

Like the beautiful clear waves, I may not linger.

Dewy flowers bloom from the frost,

Like a windborne maiden that comes from
the moon.

My heart's desire is to be united with the
Milky Way,

Yet my timid mind doubts I will ever see the
full moon.

As the sun sets through the leaves I know not
where to gaze,

As jade pendants tinkle from within the
white clouds.

Song of Beauties on Ice, by Zhou Lianggong of Daliang [Kaifeng]

Lent by a Private Collection
L.2003.44.1