Abstract: According to the notion that “words represent the voice of the mind”, a literary work is an authentic record and an accurate description of the author’s mind or experience. Nevertheless, ancient authors often revised their works over a long time, so that the last versions, quite different from the previous ones, did not reflect what actually had occurred. For example, BI Yuan, a famous writer during the reigns of Emperors Qianlong and Jiaqing in the Qing Dynasty, modified his own poems from style to content to some extent in editing them in old age. So we should carefully examine the effectiveness and applicability of the notion of “words representing the voice of the mind”.