Discussions of whether poetry is engendered primarily due to the poet's urge to express his heartfelt feelings (yuanqing) or superstructurally to express his conception of an ethical will (yanzhi) are often lumped together to form intertwined issues. While the former notion dwells on poetry as a product of individual necessity first heralded in the fourth century A.D., the latter takes poetry as fulfilment of a social need, representing an earlier recognition. Confucianists often interpret feelings (qing) in terms of expressions that fall within the ethical (or didactic) bound of propriety. The authorial will (zhi) too, has to reflect the Confucian ethics. Therefore, traditional interpretation of poetry does not differentiate the yuanqing from the yanzhi notion. However, Lu Ji, the inventor of the yuanqing notion, intends to free poetry from the traditional yoke of ethical interpretation. Qing, to him, is the individual expressive desire of poetic sentiments rather than a social mode serving as a handmaid to class ethics. While clearing up the interpretive maze of lyric poetry, Lu Ji has also offered us a view on the nature of poetry not eradicating the social dimension 6ut emphasizing the literary creative significance of it. Yuanqing, therefore, contributes to the aesthetic perception of poetry as versus yanzhi, the ethical counterpart view of it.