Silent the actors all on Nature’s stage
  Performed their parts before her watchful eyes,
  Coming and going, making war and love,
  Working and playing, all without a sound. 
  The oxen drew their load with swaying necks;
  The cows came sauntering home along the lane;
  The nodding sheep were led from field to fold
  In mute obedience.  Down the woodland track
  The hounds with panting sides and lolling tongues
  Pursued their flying prey in noiseless haste. 
  The birds, the most alive of living things,
  Mated, and built their nests, and reared their young,
  And swam the flood of air like tiny ships
  Rising and falling over unseen waves,
  And, gathering in great navies, bore away
  To North or South, without a note of song.

  All these were Vera’s playmates; and she loved
  To watch them, wondering oftentimes how well
  They knew their parts, and how the drama moved
  So swiftly, smoothly on from scene to scene
  Without confusion.  But she sometimes dreamed
  There must be something hidden in the play
  Unknown to her, an utterance of life
  More clear than action and more deep than looks. 
  And this she felt most deeply when she watched
  Her human comrades and the throngs of men,
  Who met and parted oft with moving lips
  That had a meaning more than she could see. 
  She saw a lover bend above a maid,
  With moving lips; and though he touched her not
  A sudden rose of joy bloomed in her face. 
  She saw a hater stand before his foe
  And move his lips; whereat the other shrank
  As if he had been smitten on the mouth. 
  She saw the regiments of toiling men
  Marshalled in ranks and led by moving lips. 
  And once she saw a sight more strange than all: 
  A crowd of people sitting charmed and still
  Around a little company of men
  Who touched their hands in measured, rhythmic time
  To curious instruments; a woman stood
  Among them, with bright eyes and heaving breast,
  And lifted up her face and moved her lips. 
  Then Vera wondered at the idle play,
  But when she looked around, she saw the glow
  Of deep delight on every face, as if
  Some visitor from a celestial world
  Had brought glad tidings.  But to her alone
  No angel entered, for the choir of sound
  Was vacant in the temple of her soul,
  And worship lacked her golden crown of song.

  So when by vision baffled and perplexed
  She saw that all the world could not be seen,
  And knew she could not know the whole of life
  Unless a hidden gate should be unsealed,
  She felt imprisoned.  In her heart there grew
  The bitter creeping plant of discontent,
  The plant that only grows in prison soil,
  Whose root is hunger and whose fruit is pain. 
  The springs of still delight and tranquil joy
  Were drained as dry as desert dust to