Li Bai (701-762), also known in the West as Li Po, is one of the most celebrated poets who was a wanderer and roysterer all his life. Proud of his self-image of drunken insouciance, the legend about his death has it that Li, who was drunk in a boat, drowned in an attempt to embrace the reflecting moon in the lake. He was also said to have boasted to the Emperor that he was the Immortal of Wine.

A NIGHT WITH FRIENDS

That we may purge

the world's unending sadness
Let's linger here

and drink ten barrels dry.
This night's sheer sheen

invites long conversations,
The moon's too bright

for sleep to ease one's eye
But, safely drunk,

let's bed on this bare mountain
Our pillow earth,

our coverlet the sky.

At the age of twenty-one patriotic poet Xin Qiji (1140-1207) joined the army to defend his nation against invasion. Two periods of enforced retirement enabled him to produce many of his best-known poems of which love of nature or a sense of frustration over inactivity was the recurrent theme.
To the Tune of Moon over the West River

Getting drunk is meant to be for fun
I've no time for being glum

Our old sages tell us not to seek for pleasures
And curb indulgence to short measures
Now my faith in them is shaken
In fact I know they were mistaken

Last night I keeled over by a pine tree
I asked the tree most amicably
"Don't you think that fall was very artistic
Given the fact that I'm—paralytic?"

Methought the tree did move as if to help me up
I motioned it to stay andwaved my empty cup
"Be gone!"