While More always labored to describe the ineffable, his earliest work, the poetry, may have succeeded in this wish most of all. Although he felt that his poetry was aiming toward truths which his “_later and better concocted Prose_”[8] reached, the effort cost him the suggestiveness of figurative speech. In urging himself on toward an ever more consistent statement of belief, he lost much of his beginning exuberance (best expressed in the brief “Philosopher’s Devotion”) and the joy of intellectual discovery. In the search “_to find out Words which will prove faithful witnesses of the peculiarities of my Thoughts_,” he staggers under the unsupportable burden of too many words. In trying so desperately to clarify his thought, he rejected poetic discourse as “slight”; only a language free of metaphor and symbol could, he supposed, lead toward correctness. Indeed, More soon renounced poetry; he apparently wrote no more after collecting it in _Philosophical Poems_ (1647), when he gave up poetry for “more seeming Substantial performances in solid _Prose_.”[9] “Cupids Conflict,” which is “annexed” to _Democritus Platonissans_, is an interesting revelation of the failure of poetry, as More felt it: he justifies his “rude rugged uncouth style” by suggesting that sweet verses avoid telling important truths; harshness and obscurity may at least remind one that there is a significance beyond mere words. His lament is characteristic: “How ill alas! with wisdome it accords/ To sell my living sense for liveless words.” In spite of these downcast complaints, More was quite capable of lively and meaningful poetic ideas. One is the striking image of the cone which occurs in _Democritus Platonissans_ (especially in stanzas 7-8, 66-67, and 88) and becomes the most essential symbol to More’s expression of infinitude and extension. The figure first appears in _Antipsychopannychia_ (II.9) where his purpose is to reconcile the world Soul with Christian eschatology. In _Democritus Platonissans_, the cone enables More to adapt the familiar Hermetic paradox: A Circle whose circumference no where Is circumscrib’d, whose Centre’s each where set, But the low Cusp’s a figure circular, Whose compasse is ybound, but centre’s every where. (st. 8)