Wei Zhuang and HAN Wo's Use of Rhyme in Their Poetry

Application of rhymes in poetry does not conform to the rules for it is often influenced by the sounds of the actual speeches in a particular period of time and a particular region. Wei Zhuang and Huang Wo's poems to a degree give people a picture of the phonetic features of the north dialects of the late Tang Dynasty. Their poems include rhymes of the third rising tone and forth falling tone, rhyming deviants as well as borrowed rhymes like assimilated rhymes of dong and zhong and the universal rhyming of zhi vs. wei, han vs. huan and yuan. Based on a study of the actual use of rhymes in their poems, a conclusion is drawn that their rhymes comprise 18 volumes of easy verses and 8 volumes of pressing tone verses.