Wind-singing wires Along their thousand airy aisles, Feet of birds and songs of leaves, Glimmer of stars and dewy eves. Sea-singing wires Along their thousand slimy miles, Shadowy deeps, Unsunned steeps, Beating in their awful caves To mouthing fish and bones And weeds unfurled Deserts of waves The heart-beat of this upper world. Infinite blue, infinite green, Infinite glory of the ear Ticking its passions through Infinite fear, Ooze of storm, sodden and slanting wrecks The forever untrodden decks Of Death, Ever the seething wires On the floors Of the world, Below the last Locked fast Water-darkened doors Of the sun, Lighting the awful signal fires Of our speechless vast desires On the mountains and the hills Of the sea Till the sandy-buried heights And the sullen sunken vales And fire-defying barrens of the deep The hearth of souls shall be Beacons of Thought, And from the lurk of the shark To the sunrise-lighted eerie of the lark And where the farthest cloud-sail fills Shall be felt the throbbing and the sobbing and the hoping The might and mad delight, The hell-and-heaven groping Of our little human wills. AN ODE TO THE WIRELESS THE PRAYER OF MAN THROUGH ALL THE YEARS IN WHICH THE SKY-TELEGRAPH WOULD NOT WORK Roofed in with fears, Beneath its little strip of sky That is blown about In and out Across my wavering strip of years-- Who am I Whose singing scarce doth reach The cloud-climbed hills, To take upon my lips the speech Of those whose voices Heaven fills With splendor? And yet-- I cannot quite forget That in the underdawn of dreams I have felt the faint surmise Shining through the starry deep of my sleep That I with God went singing once Up and down with suns and storms Through the phantom-pillared forms And stately-silent naves And thunder-dreaming caves Of Heaven. Great Spirit--Thou who in my being's burning mesh Hath wrought the shining of the mist through and through the flesh, Who, through the double-wondered glory of the dust Hast thrust Habits of skies upon me, souls of days and nights, Where are the deeds that needs must be, The dreams, the high delights, That I once more may hear my voice From cloudy door to door rejoice-- May stretch the boundaries of love Beyond the mumbling, mock horizons of my fears To the faint-remembered glory of those years-- May lift my soul And reach this Heaven of thine With mine? Where are the gleams? Thou shalt tell me, Shalt compel me. The sometime glory shall return I know.