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The effect is imme-diate and compelling. Whereas the initial adjectival form captures the special quiddity of the ray, the imperative form insists that the ray perform the very action which is of its essence-to pierce or penetrate. It is a repetition that is carefully designed to transfer the figurative "piercing ray" to a level which can comprehend a concrete and literal meaning. The ray is given a unique actualising power and, by implication, the reality of God's nearness is immeasurably strengthened. To the poet, in fact, the ray would seem to own an even greater reality than his own body, which he gestures towards with ironic detachment as "this body of clay" The reference belies his underlying physical frustration, the clay suggesting something heavy, unformed and dense.
The second address to God prolongs by parallelism the first and at the same time amplifies its meaning. Again the epithet pertains to light, but we are introduced to another of its functions its spreading or illumining nature. The connection between the two epithets and hence between the two parts of the poem, depends upon a logic of consecutive action. The ray must first enter the speaker and then permeate his being. It is a continuing process of physical and spiritual transformation. The final metaphor, "life of night," gathers this ambiguity of meaning to a climax. The delayed use of the key word "night" to clinch the major confrontation between light and darkness shows both control and tact. It affords the poet a certain amount of leisure in which he is able to uphold and intensify the opposition between the terms not only on a literal level but also on a figurative level-as a conflict of ignorance and knowledge-and on a symbolic level-as the interplay of man and God. This wealth of signification, combining both fixed associations and the full individuality of the poet's prayerful cry, heightens the elected plain style of the poem.
God is appealed to in many forms to alleviate the lyric speaker's despair. Sri Chinmoy invokes Him as Master, Friend, King, Lord, Supreme, Father, Musician, Boatman, Beloved, Mother, the Sun, or, simply, as "You." Since prayer petitions God directly, these varying forms of address modify God's distant, silent pose and convey something of the reciprocal nature of the relationship between God and the seeker. The exchange itself is enlivened and refreshed. In the following poem, for instance, the image of God as Boatman contains manifold possibilities for the poet:
