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Let us take Sri Chinmoy's compound "welkin-rim" as our point of departure. Reading it, we are at once flooded with associations of the slightly curved outer edge of the firmament, dwelling place of the gods. As in the example of "firedint" from Hopkins, both these words are from Old English,, although Sri Chinmoy elects to retain the slight degree of separation which a hyphen affords. The consistency of their derivation gives them not only a greater etymological bond, but is itself the source of a deeper level of meaning. "Welkin" originally denoted a cloud, while "rim" stood for a strip of land. Placed in exact juxtaposition, these word pictures create an image of going beyond land (earth) to the upper regions of the sky or heavens. In both readings of the compound we gain an impression of going beyond, of entering a transcendent and unknown realm. The very use of the compound noun in this instance acts as a kind of tacit acknowledgement that the poet has outleapt even language in his imaginative scope: he admits the reader to the possibility of the beyond. The terms of the poem make this invitation explicit:

BEYOND THE WELKIN-RIM

Are you dying for a dream?
    Then quickly come to me.
Beyond the welkin-rim
    I shall set your vision free.[46]

The gesture contained in this poem is the gesture of every poet?"They are free and they make free," says Emerson .47 He describes them as "liberating gods," able to grant our imagination wings and show us new scenes and visions. Sri Chinmoy's path, "beyond the welkin-rim," catches this note of both emancipation and exhilaration.

In the case of both Hopkins and Sri Chinmoy, the discipline and tensile strength of the compound form results in a dense poetic medium and this, in turn, demands the active response of the reader. Indeed, in some poems, the effort of comprehension itself would seem to signify a kind of spiritual growth. By way of illustration, we might take the following poem:

TO SERVE MY MAKER-LORD

    To serve my Maker-Lord
I saw the light of day
    To love my Beloved Friend
I began our oneness-play.[48]

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