sets of clean clothing prepared and asked the monks to give them to Han-shan and Shide should they ever return. Lüqiu Yin later learned that the two hadn't reappeared at the monastery and had the presents delivered to their dwellings on Tiantai Mountain. When Hanshan saw these delivery men, it is said, he cried "Thieves! Thieves!" and retreated to a cave entrance, exclaiming, "Each of you should exert himself to the utmost," and withdrew into the cave, which closed itself behind him. Han-shan and Shide were never seen again at Guoqing temple. Lüqiu Yin had all the writings left behind by Han-shan and Shide collected. Han-shan had written on rocks, bamboo bark, trees, and the walls of houses in neighboring villages, and Shide had written a 49-line poem on the wall of an Earth God temple. Poetry Hanshan's poetry consists of Chinese verse, in 3, 5, or 7 character lines; never shorter than 4 lines, and never longer than 34 lines. The language is marked by the use of more colloquial Medieval Vernacular Sinitic than almost any other Tang poet. The poems can be seen to fall into three categories: the biographical poems about his life before he arrived at Cold Mountain; the religious and political poems, generally critical of conventional wisdom and those who embrace it; and the transcendental poems, about his sojourn at Cold Mountain. They are notable for their straightforwardness, which contrasts sharply with the cleverness and intricateness that marked typical Tang dynasty poetry. Red Pine poem 283: Mister Wang the Graduate laughs at my poor prosody. I don't know a wasp's waist much less a crane's knee. I can't keep my flat tones straight, all my words come helter-skelter. I laugh at the poems he writes- a blind man's songs about the sun! (All these terms refer to ways a poem could be defective according to the rigid poetic structures then prevalent.) Thematically, Hanshan draws heavily on Buddhist and Taoist themes, often remarking on life's short and transient nature, and the necessity of escape through some sort of transcendence. He varies and expands on this theme, sometimes speaking of Mahayana Buddhism's 'Great Vehicle', and other times of Taoist ways and symbols like cranes. The following poem begins with the imagery of the burning house and the three carts from the Parable of the Burning House found in The Lotus Sutra, then ends with typical Zen and