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The last line then, emerges not as a solution but as an affirmation, a triumphant restoration to the poet of hope, of faith and of will. Its component elements are dramatically isolated by the initial grammatical inversion or anastrophe. The words are deliberate, slow and forceful. They are also formal in a lyrical sense, with the word "iota" acting as a pivotal contrast between the poet's previously encompassing "all I break; again, all I build" and his new-found urge to banish the merest fraction of despair. The concluding note is therefore one of undeniable strengthstrength of language, strength of metaphor (which never weakens into vague Romantic fantasy) and strength of theme: the awakening of man to his own aspiring nature, a movement of the human spirit towards wholeness. That we grasp the poem as a totality must also be seen as a result of the skilful concealment of many rhetorical devices within the structure of the poem-variations in syntax, differing patterns of iteration, systems of balance and antithesis, key rhymes as well as the subtle musicality of pararhymes and assonance-all bring to the poem a heightened quality of expressiveness which we, as readers, readily interpret and to which we instinctively respond.

The "chiefest skill" of eloquence, according to Plutarch, is

to knowe howe to move the passions and affections thoroughly, which are as stoppes and soundes of the soule, that would be played upon with the fine fingered hand of a conning master. [15]

From the foregoing analysis of "Bird of Light," we have seen a direct connection between the art of speaking artistically and specific emotional effects. We have also established the fact that rhetorical figures are born of the natural patterns of speech when highlighted by special conditions. The dominance of rhetoric in Sri Chinmoy's poetry, however, is more than an accidental reproduction of these natural patterns. It amounts to a conscious craft.