Guan Hanqing (c. 1240-c. 1320)
A leading dramatist of the Northern Drama, he is credited with more than 64 plays, of which some 15 have survived complete. Apart from his literary career, he was also said to have been a theatrical manager and sometime actor.

Guan Hanqing: Sometimes
translated by Allen P. Alsop

Her lovely coiffure flows up like a cloud,
A tiny foot peeks from its red silken cover.
This is no wild flower that grows by the road.
Curses to you, handsome, bothersome lover!

Sometimes he's hard to take,

Sometimes he's not.

Outside the green-gauze window stirs not a soul;
He kneels by the bed all ready for embrace.
She calls him heartless and turns coldly away.
Her words, 'tis true, are reproachful to his face.

But sometimes she's hard to get,

Sometimes she's not.

A graceful plume curls from the cold silver lamp,
Behind the bed-curtains my tears won't abate.
To sleep all alone takes the joy out of life.
With only a thin quilt for a mate—
Though sometimes it's warm enough,
Sometimes it's not.

My lover is such an affectionate thing,
He worries a girl till she's weary and grey.
Whatever he had to say, he's got me fooled.
So how could I know when we play—

That sometimes he's really true

Li Qingzhao (1084?-c. 1151)
The best-known woman poet in Chinese literary history, Li Qingzhao came from a literary family. She is renowned especially for the intensity of her poems which deal with her personal experiences.

Li Qingzhao: One Branch of Spring Flowers
translated by Bing Xin

The sweet red lotus flower is gone,
And Autumn cools my green reed-mats.
Slowly I doff my silken dress;
I enter alone my little boat.
Who from the cloud sends down to me
That letter scribed on silk?
The geese write across the sky
The symbol of the geese again;
Full moonlight fills my western room.

Apart the flowers fall,
Apart the waters flow away.
Love is but one and yet it mourns,
Being parted, in two separate places.
I have no power to shed my hurt;
Grief goes from my drawn brows
But pierces straightway my heart.