This lyric address to the mind, heart and soul highlights the essence of each one. Again the parallel structure provides the poet with a framework which allows him to arrange his perceptions in an ascending scale. Within each colon there are only two variables: the object of the poet’s address and its definitive compound. The choice of words for each compound is governed by the poem’s own internal set of rules which require that each part of the poet’s being is linked with a natural symbolic feature. In accordance with this pattern, the poet relates the mind to clouds, the heart to the moon and the soul to the sun. The symbolism in each case is traditional and unambiguous. It is with a sense of aptness and familiarity that we marry clouds with the mind for they capture the confusion of the mental sphere. Similarly, the moon signifies the beauty of the heart, while the sun stands for the wisdom of the soul It is in the second half of each compound that the poet’s language becomes most poignant and original. These descriptive nouns disclose the special quiddity of each symbol. In addition, their delicate rhyme gives the poem a rare beauty. The soft, feminine endings of “cluster”, “lustre” and “rapture” elevate the poem as a whole to the level of song. Elegantly spaced by the three separate stanzas, these compounds do not fail to thrill the reader.
Sri Chinmoy employs compounds of many different kinds. They are particularly effective in drawing out the actualising power of certain abstract concepts:
KILL THE DOUBT-SNAKE
Slowly and steadily
Kill the doubt-snake
That has encircled your searching mind
And enveloped your crying heart.
(5549)
The poem is a dramatic attempt to arouse the seeker to an awareness of the peril of succumbing to doubt. The strong element of danger to the seeker’s aspiration is met with an equivalent strength of diction and imagery. The unexpressed centre of the poem is a powerful concern on the part of the poet which manifests itself in the spontaneous figurative association of the “doubt-snake”. This taut compound, like a single spondaic foot inserted into the poem, is made conspicuous not only by its accentual gravity but also by the poet’s use of graphic supporting verbs. He counters the danger with deliberate violence, urging the seeker to “kill” the snake that twists and twines around his mind and heart. The emotional force of this picture is absolutely proper to the degree of danger that is represented.
It may be seen that the compound noun acts as a kind of syntactic shorthand. In the longer and more discursive forms of simile and metaphor (for example, “the snake of doubt” or “doubtlike snake”), one noun is made subordinate to the other, resulting in only a partial identification between the two. The compound form, however, yokes together two nuclei of equal status. The “doubt” subject is thus specifically characterised as a snake. It is an immediate doubling of the subject.
One of the greatest contributions made by compounds in these poems is in approaching God — His “Compassion-Flood”, “Justice-Height”, “Vision-Light” and so on. Rather than attempting to fix the nature of God, this doubling effect creates a fluidity of meaning, a tacit accretion of whole new areas of reference. It is a form of expression which is in its very grain poetic:
EACH TIME I THINK OF HIM
Each time I think of Him,
I become His Beauty’s
Perfection-Bird
And His Duty’s
Satisfaction-Wings.
(6635)
This is an exquisite expression of the transfigured personality. Far from causing the poem to become monolithic, the two compounds tend to increase its impulse to soar. They infuse the reader with a subtle understanding of God as an infinite sky across which the bird of the soul sports freely. The compounds are not only illuminative but they cause the poem to sparkle with freshness. The simplest of words begins to glow with a new grandeur and sanctity.
The presence of compounds in the poems, the rich and revealing parallel structure and the compression of vision and expression within the microscosmic stanzaic form together create what might have been thought impossible in the English language – the effect of word-shrines. These are not born of the poet’s struggle with language but of his victorious acceptance of it. If its powers have waned, he wakes them by using them with a greater dignity than they had previously known; if its words are limited, he gives them new resonance by calling on them to help him approach the highest summits of spiritual vision; where there is power, he preserves it; where there is energy, he harnesses it. All that was immature and undeveloped in the vocabulary of the inner life has now become mature and fully developed. In the poems of Ten Thousand Flower-Flames the English language achieves at last its true spiritual potential.