You call me insistently, Yet when I run blithely to the place Where your voice deaves be, you bar the door in my face. What for do you treat me thus and hide? For still I hear you calling me from the other side. I am going to hold on to the sneck and wait. I ken there is something behind the door; early and late You cry on me still. If it be your will Never to open, yet is it meet That I come For under the door I can keek at the shadow of your feet Moving in a larger room. HERO You are good enough then To hold the tiller for these men, In case they are called to the sheets together By a sudden change in the weather. GRIPPER No earthly blast can overwhelm The ship of which I hold the helm If I have just a kenning more to grip, Something that will not give me the slip Like the rudder he has fashioned. I need something more impassioned, Something to which a mind can hold For a body’s apt to grow cold. [_The sleeping girl stirs and smiles._] HERO This is a shade sublimer. GRIPPER Who are you? CLIMBER [_Talking in her sleep._] I am a good climber. GRIPPER How good are you? CLIMBER I have climbed from the mind of man to the mind of God on a nervous stair. GRIPPER [_Astonished._] Lassie, that’s no canny! Were you no feared to fall? CLIMBER [_In her sleep._] Some day I’ll die, but how, or when, or where I do not greatly care, Because I know that with the flowers and weeds My life proceeds, If so I will, inside a gracious law. No flaw My death will be, nor mischievous accident, Howe’er besprent My blood upon the highway or the turf, Or in the surf Of thunderous combers on the ungathered sea But it will be An obvious hint of a Supreme design, A little clew of mine Left huddled by the beach or cliff to tell— “Pass, friend, all’s well!” HERO Let him hold fast The substance of your mind, So that he’ll find The evidence of unseen things that last, And that he’ll still behold Although his hand grows cold And cannot any longer feel The thing he thought was real. CLIMBER [_Still in her sleep._]