Among the poems about plum blossoms sung by the ancients, one is quite famous, that is, Xiaomei in the Garden in the Mountains written by Lin Bu, a poet in the Northern Song Dynasty before the author. In particular, the poem "Shadows are shallow and dusk is fragrant" is known as Yongmei's swan song. Lin Bu, who has never been an official, married and had children, and lived alone on the hillside of an isolated mountain near the West Lake, growing plums and raising cranes, living in seclusion.
Therefore, when he wrote Yongmei's poems, he could only express his lofty thought of being divorced from social reality. Wang Anshi's poems are different. He skillfully borrowed Lin Bu's poems, but he was able to bring forth the new. Look at the plum blossoms he wrote. They are as white as snow. They grow in the corner without inferiority, and they exude a fragrance from a distance.
The poet described the purity and beauty of plum blossom with snow by appreciating its noble character of not being afraid of cold, and pointed out that plum blossom has a "dark fragrance" more than snow, which shows the great charm of a strong and noble personality.
In the extremely complicated and difficult situation of the Northern Song Dynasty, the author actively reformed without support, and his lonely mentality and difficult situation naturally had something in common with Meihua. This little poem has profound implications, and the sentences are simple and natural, without any traces of carving.