Gushi (poetry)

Gushi (simplified Chinese: 古诗; traditional Chinese: 古詩; pinyin: gǔshī; Wade–Giles: ku-shih) is one of the main poetry forms of defined in Classical Chinese poetry, literally meaning "old (or ancient) poetry" or "old (or ancient) style poetry": gushi is a technical term for certain historically exemplary poems, together with later poetry composed in this formal style.
Poetic form
The normal formal style is for uniform line lengths of 5 or 7 syllables (or characters), with lines in syntactically-paired couplets. Parallelism emphasizing thesis or antithesis is frequently found but is not an obligatory feature. Rhymes generally occur at the ends of couplets, the actual rhyme sound sometimes changing through the course of the poem. Caesura usually occurs as a major feature before the last 3 syllables in any line, with the 7 syllable lines also often having a minor caesura in between the first two pairs of syllables. The final 3 syllables...