“It is not man’s to dream in sweet repose;
He toils and murmurs, as he wondering goes,
Poor changeful glitter on the stream that flows
   In lapses huge and solemn roar,
   Ever on without a shore.

“The plantlet grown in darkness puts forth spray;
Through loaded gloom yearns feebly toward some ray
Of bounty golden from the outer day
   That shines eternally sublime
   On the dancing motes of time.”

The music stopped, and passed into a smile
Of tenderness, which she impressed to guile
Her pain from me:  I gazed as one awhile
   Escaped, who sees twin rainbows shine
   O’er his wrecked ship gulfed in brine.

My lost soul sank adown in soundless seas
To ruined heaps besprent with ancient lees
Of wealth:  by soft stupendous ocean-trees;
   By anchors forged in early time,
   Changed to trails of rusted slime: 

To where, what seemed a tomb, in this deep hell
Of night, bore a dim name I dread to tell: 
And there I heard sound some gigantic bell,
   Whose thunder laughing through my brain
   Mocked me back to flesh again.

Here all was emptier than the empty shade
Of mist before a midnight moon decayed: 
Here life was strange as death, and more dismayed
   My spirit, now scarce conscious she
   Urged entreaty yet to me.

“’Tis life in life to know the King is just,
And will not animate his helpless dust
With fire unquenchable whose ardour must
   Achieve majestic deeds that raise
   Universal shouts of praise: 

“Shouts of acclaim that gather into story,
Chanted by one on some high promontory
Who glowing in the dawn’s advancing glory,
   Far down upon the listening crowd
   Shines through swathes of lingering cloud: 

“And fires, by what he sings, to noble feud
With grosser instincts, the charged multitude,
That grow in temper and similitude
   To those great souls whose victories
   Triumph still in melodies: 

“This fire will not be granted to distress,
To fail in cold dead ash and bitterness: 
He will not grant true love that yearns to bless
   The world, that it may only sigh
   Back into itself and die.”

The words here faltering sank to undertone: 
Her soul was murmuring to itself alone
On some wide desolation, dark, unknown;
   Whose limits, stretched from mortal sight
   Touch the happy hills of light.

“I, toiling at the task assigned to me,
Am summoned from my labour suddenly: 
The King recalls his handmaiden; and she
   Submissively herself anoints,
   Going whither He appoints.

“The sheaves are garnered now, her work is done,
The day is waning, and she must be gone,
To bend herself before the Holy One,
   And strictly her appointed meed
   There accept in very deed.”

Dead silence, more than if a thunder-stroke
Had crashed the summer air, my sense awoke
To sudden apprehension:  hard the yoke
   Of misery was mine to bear;
   Wrath-befooled, in my despair