Once on a time a soul Too full of his dole In a querulous dream went crying from pole to pole -- Went sobbing and crying For ever a sorrowful song of living and dying, How `life was the dropping and death the drying Of a Tear that fell in a day when God was sighing.' And ever Time tossed him bitterly to and fro As a shuttle inlaying a perilous warp of woe In the woof of things from terminal snow to snow, Till, lo! Rest. And he sank on the grass of the earth as a lark on its nest, And he lay in the midst of the way from the east to the west. Then the East came out from the east and the West from the west, And, behold! in the gravid deeps of the lower dark, While, above, the wind was fanning the dawn as a spark, The East and the West took form as the wings of a lark. One wing was feathered with facts of the uttermost Past, And one with the dreams of a prophet; and both sailed fast And met where the sorrowful Soul on the earth was cast. Then a Voice said: `Thine, if thou lovest enough to use;' But another: `To fly and to sing is pain: refuse!' Then the Soul said: `Come, O my wings! I cannot but choose.' And the Soul was a-tremble like as a new-born thing, Till the spark of the dawn wrought a conscience in heart as in wing, Saying, `Thou art the lark of the dawn; it is time to sing.' Then that artist began in a lark's low circling to pass; And first he sang at the height of the top of the grass A song of the herds that are born and die in the mass. And next he sang a celestial-passionate round At the height of the lips of a woman above the ground, How `Love was a fair true Lady, and Death a wild hound, And she called, and he licked her hand and with girdle was bound.' And then with a universe-love he was hot in the wings, And the sun stretched beams to the worlds as the shining strings Of the large hid harp that sounds when an all-lover sings; And the sky's blue traction prevailed o'er the earth's in might, And the passion of flight grew mad with the glory of height And the uttering of song was like to the giving of light; And he learned that hearing and seeing wrought nothing alone, And that music on earth much light upon Heaven had thrown, And he melted-in silvery sunshine with silvery tone; And the spirals of music e'er higher and higher he wound Till the luminous cinctures of melody up from the ground Arose as the shaft of a tapering tower of sound -- Arose for an unstricken full-finished Babel of sound. But God was not angry, nor ever confused his tongue, For not out of selfish nor impudent travail was wrung The song of all men and all things that the all-lover sung. Then he paused at the top of his tower of song on high, And the voice of the God of the artist from far in the sky Said, `Son, look down: I will cause that a Time gone by Shall pass, and reveal his heart to thy loving eye.'