Although initially he was little @-@ known to other writers , his works came to be hugely influential in both Chinese and Japanese literary culture . Of his poetic writing , nearly fifteen hundred poems have been preserved over the ages . He has been called the " Poet @-@ Historian " and the " Poet @-@ Sage " by Chinese critics , while the range of his work has allowed him to be introduced to Western readers as " the Chinese Virgil , Horace , Ovid , Shakespeare , Milton , Burns , Wordsworth , Béranger , Hugo or Baudelaire " .