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This in turn affects the language of the poem. Words suggestive of emotional cadence have been consciously omitted. Bliss itself is pictured as the landscape in which the poet dwells. The language that most adequately fulfils the poet's needs is the language of statement-strong, lucid utterances of fact. From the poet's first major statement, "I only exist," to the last line of the poem, "My cosmic play is done," we observe no movement or new development in the action of the poem. There is, however, a sustained effort to amplify and locate these core statements by successively re-phrasing them and by casting them in an evolutionary perspective:

I have crossed the secret ways of life,
        I have become the Goal.

We gain a sense of spiritual journeying that has led to this ultimate state. It is this impression of epic dimension that finally releases the poem from its lyrical framework into the broad epic stream. Traditional patterns of questing converge in this mystic pilgrimage and the lyric-I is elevated to a figure of heroic proportions, a pathfinder who affirms "I am the way, the God-Soul." Again, this view of the lyric-I as an heroic projection is modulated by the central tendency of all lyrics to affix no historical context to the speaking voice. As a rule, we know no more about the "I" than its interior development and discoveries. This feature of anonymity is, however, to the poet's advantage, as Barbara Hardy explains:

The best lyric poems express the individual quality of individual states of feeling and the absence of character and history is a positive strength and a symptom of the poet's concern, his truthfulness and his sense of proportion.[51]