Throughout the poems there where several aspects that I noticed carried throughout all of them regardless of the story they convey. The first of these themes was the use of nature to convey a story about the word around them. Most of these instances mention mountains, rain, wind, and other forces or aspects of nature that the writer has present around them. This use of nature seems to demonstrate almost a meditative state the writer enters as they discuss their joy and passion for tea. The second of these themes was the idea of white or purity. The message can be conveyed in a few different ways. The first is using nature such as I mentioned above, often using snow and personifying it in a heavenly manner that gives off this idea. Other times this can be illustrated though talking about ways of cleansing and how tea and other things purify the mind, body, and soul, ridding it of all sickness and impurities. Lastly this theme is also commonly portrayed by simply mentioning purifying something or relating it to a pure heavenly quality. While these two concept’s are rather different I found it to be very interesting that all of these poems had aspects of at least one of these, and often times both in them. It is interesting that such a wide variety of poems from a vast array of locations and people could show such a common principle. Based on that, these aspects really speak about the period they where written in, and the ideas and values these people held; which in of itself is a valuable thing to learn about the time, place, and its high value of tea.
