Page 88
I am the endless emblem
Of the infinite sky.
0 Absolute Beauty,
I see You within my heart;
I see You in the breath of Universal Life.
Like a child I smile and smile
And garner Immortality-Fruit.
These carpe diem lyrics represent surges of joy: shouts, impulses. At the moment of achieving intelligent articulation, the poet suddenly vanishes, leaving his poem unencumbered, set free from his hand. The compass of these poems seldom extends beyond a single image, a river of light, a lightning spark. More often than not, the image is the poem and anything not incorporable in this image is pared away. The result is a high degree of emotional precision on the contextual level and a fluidity of design and execution on the technical level. Poems such as these provide ample illustration of Barbara Hardy's definition of lyric poetry: "Lyric poetry isolates feeling in small compass and so renders it at its most intense."[67]
Sri Chinmoy's ease of expression, the graceful artlessness of so many of his songs, their lightness and directness, heralds a return to the plain style we associate with religious poets such as Herbert. The dominant feature of this style is its emphatic simplicity. This simplicity of outer expression is held to bear a direct correspondence to the poet's own sincerity and truthfulness. Thus Joseph Summers, in discussing Herbert's verse, comments:
With Herbert, in contrast with Donne, our final impression is not of the brilliant surface, of the delightful logical gymnastics, or of a powerful personality engaged in dramatising its conflicts and its vitality; it is, rather, an impression of astonishing simplicity.
... The simplicity is the simplicity of the spirit; it is the reverse of naivete. It is the impression left by the few who are most successful in the almost impossible search to know what the are and to recognise unflinchingly what they feel.[68]

