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The felicity and melodiousness of this song, in which phrase answers phrase and one line echoes another, is conditioned by the poet's endeavour to become a perfect instrument of the Divine. He sings not only of God, but for God, with the intention of being heard by Him. In this way praise is mingled with the poet's ecstatic outpouring.

Songs of praise often form the point of departure for prayer; they may equally signal the fruition of prayer, the direct experience of God's presence. That it is frequently difficult to distinguish between these two differing impulses to praise is due to the fact that there is an intuition of ecstasy in all praise. Hence, the very act of praise itself, though it may begin as a "labour," a formal approach to God from a state of despair, can, if it is effective, transform the seeker's inner condition even as it is being formulated:


ONLY ONE HOPE

Break asunder all my hopes.
Only keep one hope,
And that hope is to learn
The language of Your inner Silence
In my utter unconditional surrender.
In Your clear and free sky
I shall be calm and perfect.
The bird of my heart is dancing today
In the festival of supernal Light.[86]


Since praise is essentially an offering, its movement is projected away from the speaker. Consequently, lyrics of this kind tend rather to register the quality of inner changes in the speaker than to analyse them in any detail. The poems simply record the process of change. One typical example is the small poem "Tune Me For Life." Here, the vocabulary of music supplies the dominant imagery of praise:

 

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