Nineteen Old Poems also known as Ku-shih shih-chiu shih is an anthology of Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

 poems, consisting of nineteen poems collected during the Han Dynasty

Han Dynasty

The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...

. These nineteen poems were very influential in regards to later poetry, in part because of their use of the five-character line (or, wuyen shi). 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

Wen Xuan

The Wen Xuan is one of the earliest existing collections of Chinese poetry, though the verse it contains is all from the Qin Dynasty, Han Dynasty, and later. It was compiled around AD 520 during the Southern Dynasty by Xiao Tong, the eldest son of Emperor Wu of Liang, and a group of scholars he...

. Watson's feeling is that the Nineteen Old Poems mainly date from the second century CE. The gushi

Gushi (poetry)

Gushi is a type of Classical Chinese poem literally meaning "old poetry" or "old style poetry": gushi is a technical term for certain historically exemplary poems together with poetry composed in this formal style...

, or old style, poetry developed as an important poetic form of Classical Chinese poetry, in subsequent eras.