The most interesting thing to me about the poetry fromm the Song dynasty is that it was usually written or set to music.  Additionally, because the language is unknown to me, I can only imagine how musical the poems were when combined with the musical instruments of the era.  I love music very much, and also imagine that it was probably one of the best things in life, at least for some, to sit and listen to these Song dynasty poems and orchestrations.

In his article "Ci Songs from the Song Dynasty: A Ménage à Trois of Lyrics, Music, and Performance" author Joseph S.C. Lam describes this style of poetry or song, and its three principle components - lyrics, music, and performance - as "...a ménage à trois...when the three join forces at the same time and place, their expressiveness transcends that which each can individually offer."  Focusing on one of the most revered of ancient Chinese poets, Jian Kui, Lam has collated reconstructions of the sounds and rhythms of several of the master's poems, helping the reader 'hear' the accompaniment with original textual arrangements but also sheet music compiled by experts in the field of Chinese poetry.

As one example, Lam reprints the following poem by Jian Kui styled in the "Rouged Lips" form of cipai poetry and notes that

"Reading Jiang Kui’s lyrics with close attention, a ci composer can immediately devise an embryonic melody by lining up linguistic tones of the words and articulating its semantic and rhymed structure with rhythmically sustained tones. Thus, the semantic unit “sui, yun, qu” (which literally means “follow,” “clouds,” “go”) at the end of the second line above should be sung with two relatively low tones and then a relatively high tone, since the last character, an oblique word in the descending tone (qusheng), can hardly be sung high unless it is preceded by lower ones. In order to create a song whose music interpretively realizes its meanings, however, a composer has to articulate semantic divisions and rhymes in the lyrics with melodic progressions and cadences specified by the heptatonic Xianlügong mode, the conventional modal affiliation of the “Rouged Lips” cipai." 

And the poem,

"Heartlessly, swallows and wild geese,

Fly away with clouds floating above Lake Taihu’s west side.

Lonely and suffering, several mountains,

Negotiate a showering of dusk rain.

Standing by the Fourth Bridge,

I try to follow Lu Guimeng’s path.

What is the world now?

Leaning on handrails, I think of the past,

While withered willows dance tall and short."

For me, this poem is a beautiful verse about a mountaintop walk on a cloudy day and some introspection, and a metaphor for getting older, less idealistic, and perhaps a bit cynical.  Such a sentiment expressed in song, while enduring the lifeways of Chinese people during the early second millennium, must have been a welcome respite indeed.

References

Lam, J. S. C. "Ci Songs from the Song Dynasty: A Ménage à Trois of Lyrics, Music, and Performance." New Literary History. Vol. 46, no. 4. 2015.