Nineteen Old Poems (simplified Chinese: 古诗十九首; traditional Chinese: 古詩十九首; pinyin: Gǔshī Shíjiǔ Shǒu), also known as Ku-shih shih-chiu shou is an anthology of Chinese poems, consisting of nineteen poems which were probably originally collected during the Han Dynasty. These nineteen poems were very influential on later poetry, in part because of their use of the five-character line (Chinese: 五言诗; pinyin: wǔ yán shī). The dating of the original poems is uncertain, though in their present form they can be traced back to about 520 CE, when these poems were included in the famous literary analogy Wen Xuan, a compilation of literature attributed to the Liang Crown Prince Xiao Tong. The Nineteen Old Poems have been supposed to date mainly from the second century CE. The gushi, or old style, poetr