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Shen Zhou's "Poet on a Mountaintop"
Shen Zhou exemplified literati painting in another way -- his blending of poetry and painting, the arts of words and images. Many of Shen Zhou's paintings include poems of his own -- many also include poems composed by friends.
The painting below is one of Shen Zhou's most famous. The scholar alone in nature seems to be looking out not over a chasm of rocks and clouds, but directly at the poem that Shen has placed before him. Here is what the poem says:
White clouds sash-like
wrap mountain waists,
Rock terrace flying into space,
distant, a narrow path.
Leaning on a bramble staff,
far and free
I gaze;
To the warbling valley brook
I reply with
the cry of my flute.