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THE ANCIENT MAN

The ancient man,
Needed God's Grace.

The modern man
Needs God's Face.

The future man
Will need God's Embrace.[29]

The poem is a perfect illustration of poetic composure housing the keenest intuition. It stands as an interpretation, in outline, of man's spiritual progress. Each age signals a moving nearer to God-Union: the action of His Grace, the sight of His Face and the touch of His Embrace symbolise mankind's deepening need for God. This tripartite division, corresponding to the three ages of man, shapes the poem into distinct aphoristic units.

In other poems, the poet allows the rhythm of perception to shape his thoughts. Such poems present themselves as pure proposition and subsist as poetry by virtue of their inner metaphoric density:

MAN FIRST CAME TO KNOW OF GOD

Man first came to know of God
When religion-flames arose
From humanity's crying
    And tearing heart.[30]

Here the poet records a psychic fact in mankind's inner history: the birth of religion, he declares, arose spontaneously from struggle, even as the first few flames of a fire are produced by rubbing two sticks together vigorously. Humanity's heart discovered its urgent need for God in the depths of its own torments and conflicts. It is an astute perception and one which although removed from the immediately observable, is convincingly realised in the metaphoric compound noun "religion-flames."