Meng Haoran visits someone in the hills...

and does not find him

To My Friend Zhang Five, When I Climbed Mt Lan in the Autumn
Meng Haoran

Among white clouds, high on a northern hill,
You’ve found a life of personal delight.
I came to find you, climbed and searched until
Great geese flew by; I watched them out of sight,
And felt the sadness of the rising dusk,
And relished the pellucid autumn night.
Along the beach were farmers wending home,
I watched them rest and wait for boats, or walk.
A sandbar in the stream was like the moon;
Each skyline tree looked like a mustard stalk.
Next time I come, make sure to bring your ale.
For Double Ninth, we’ll drink too much and talk.

孟浩然  秋登兰山寄张五
北山白云里，隐者自怡悦。
相望试登高，心随雁飞灭。
愁因薄暮起，兴是清秋发。
时见归村人，沙行渡头歇。
天边树若荠，江畔洲如月。
何当载酒来，共醉重阳节。

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I sometimes wonder if the poets would ever get upset to find their friends at home. It’s lovely to meet, no doubt, but the opportunity for a great missed meeting poem would be dashed.

In this poem Meng refers to a famous earlier work by the pre-Tang poet Tao Hongjing:

        A Poem in Reply to a Royal Letter Enquiring What There Is in the Mountains
        Tao Hongjing

        Among the mountains, what wealth do I own?
        Above the peaks, the clouds of white.
        But clouds are personal delight;
        They cannot be collected for the throne.

Tao had withdrawn from public life, and was telling the king to stop bothering him. He became one of the conventional models for honourable rejection of service in a bad administration - and was co-opted as a descriptor for anyone who was living out in the country. So Meng’s reference to ‘personal delight’ is bland praise for a friend.

But the reason this poem is prized is the originality of Meng’s landscape description later. Of course, Meng Haoran (691-740) lived in the early mid-Tang, several generations before Meng Jiao. The kind of outrageous images that Meng Jiao would use became possible because of the way Meng Haoran and his contemporaries expanded the poetic palette. Here Meng recognises the bucolic beauty of the evening rural scene, but doesn’t choose to make a moralistic point about how excellent it is that the empire is well-ordered. Instead he makes a whimsical comparison between trees and common garden vegetables, that is both surprising and fitting.