The analogical method in theology — speaking of God through comparisons drawn from finite experience — underlies much devotional poetry, as in Herbert's "The Pulley," where the relationship between God and humanity is explored through an extended mechanical analogy; Homer's epic similes are extended analogies that pause the narrative to illuminate heroic action through comparison with natural or domestic scenes, philosophically grounding the extraordinary in the ordinary; Aristotle considered the capacity to make good analogies the mark of genius, and metaphysical poets like Donne exemplified this in "conceits" that drew startling analogical connections between disparate domains (lovers and compasses, death and sleep); Aquinas's analogia entis — the analogy of being — holds that creatures resemble God without being identical to God, and this philosophical structure underwrites the medieval lyric's capacity to find divine meaning in earthly things; A poet exploring grief might construct an analogy between the work of mourning and the labor of archaeology — each a careful unearthing of buried things — using the philosophical structure of analogy to illuminate the emotional through the intellectual; Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind" builds an extended analogy between the wind's power and the poet's desire for prophetic voice, using natural process as an analogue for creative and political force