The day shall be When by wondering I shall learn With vapor-fingers to discern The music-hidden keys of skies-- Shall touch like thee Until they answer me The chords of the silent air And strike the wild and slumber-music out Dreaming there. Above the hills of singing that I know On the trackless, soundless path That wonder hath I shall go, Beyond the street-cry of the poet, The hurdy-gurdy singing Of the throngs, To the Throne of Silence, Where the Doors That guard the farthest faintest shores Of Day Swing their bars, And shut the songs of heaven in From all our dreaming-doing din, Behind the stars. There, at last, The climbing and the singing passed, And the cry, My hushed and listening soul shall lie At the feet of the place Where the Singer sings Who Hides His Face. VII THE IDEA OF GREAT MEN "_I had a vision under a green hedge A hedge of hips and haws--Men yet shall hear Archangels rolling over the high mountains Old Satan's empty skull._" As it looks from MOUNT TOM, casting a general glance around, the Earth has about been put into shape, now, to do things. The Earth has never been seen before looking so trim and convenient--so ready for action--as it is now. Steamships and looms and printing presses and railways have been supplied, wireless telegraph furnishings have lately been arranged throughout, and we have put in speaking tubes on nearly all the continents, and it looks--as seen from Mount Tom, at least, as if the planet were just being finished up, now, for a Great Author. It is true that art and literature do not have, at first glance, a prosperous look in a machine age, but probably the real trouble the modern world is having with its authors is not because it is a world full of materialism and machinery, but because its authors are the wrong size. The modern world as it booms along recognizes this, in its practical way, and instead of stopping to speak to its little authors, to its poets crying beside it, and stooping to them and encouraging them, it is quietly and sensibly (as it seems to some of us) going on with its machines and things making preparations for bigger ones. I have thought the great authors in every age were made by the greatness of the listening to them. The greatest of all, I notice, have felt listened to by God. Even the lesser ones (who have sometimes been called greatest) have felt listened to, most of them, one finds, by nothing less than nations. The man Jesus gathers kingdoms about Him in His talk, like an infant class. It was the way He felt. Almost any one who could have felt himself listened to in this daring way that Jesus did would have managed to say something. He could hardly have missed, one would think, letting fall one or two great ideas at least--ideas that nations would be born for.