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All literature," writes Steiner, "is language in a condition of special use."[6] Whether this special use required language of praise or anger, joy or despair, classical writers found that the patterned expression of rhetoric could evoke that state. "The emotions of the mind are inflamed by the sparks of speech," wrote Vives in the sixteenth century[7] Rhetorical figures provided writers with

stylisations or records of man's natural emotional behaviour as expressed in language, which when properly applied form the best stylistic means of re-creating the details of human emotion in literature.[8]

Seen in this light, rhetoric is indeed formulaic, holding systems of symmetry and balance essential to the craftsman, but it can never be mere machinery as long as it retains its intimate bond with the natural rhetorical element that exists in any spoken language. The appropriateness of any rhetorical figure, argues Gerald Else,

is not to be tested so much, therefore, by formal stylistic criteria as by the ear -of the spectator or reader, who says to himself, "Yes, this is the way men do talk when they are angry or downcast or full of admiration; I have heard things said just that way many times.?[9]

It is in this context, then, that the rhetorical effects of a poet such as Sri Chinmoy may be considered. A single poem will serve at the outset to help us identify the various elements of production in his verse: "O BIrd of Light" (from My Flute)