Early medieval authors set in place enduring elements of the poetic tradition. The most fundamental was to make a regular practice of composing lyric poetry (shi). During the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce), the centerpiece of literary culture had been recitations of rhyme-prose (fu) whose dazzling rhetoric could extend for hundreds of lines. Relative to the lesser technical challenge of the brief lyric, rather few shi were written. Some were preserved as codas to the fu and underscored their praise for the government. The most impassioned poems, special to the Han, were songs (ge) of despair by the royal household and its associates when their lives or the state were endangered.