But the unsleeping spirits of dreamers,
In hours when the world-voice is still,
Are building, with faith without falter,
Bright steps up to heaven's high altar,
Where lead all the aisles of the earth.
Was I sleeping? I know not -- or waking?
The body was resting, I ween;
Meseems it was o'ermuch tired
With the toils of the day that had gone;
When sudden there came the bright breaking
Of light thro' a shadowy screen;
And with the brightness there blended
The voice of the Being descended
From a star ever pure of all sin,
In music too sweet to be lyred
By the lips of the sinful and mortal.
And, oh! how the pure brightness shone!
As shines thro' the summer morn's portal
Rays golden and white as the snow,
As white as the flakes -- ah, no! whiter;
Only angelic wings may be brighter
When they flash o'er the brow of some woe
That walketh this shadowed below.
The soul loseth never its seeing,
In the goings of night and of day
It graspeth the Infinite Far.
No wonder there may come some Being,
As if it had wandered astray
At times down the wonder-filled way --
As to me in the midnight of May --
From its home in some glory-crowned star,
Where evil hath never left traces;
Where dwelleth the highest of races,
Save the angels that circle the throne,
In a grace far beyond all our graces,
Whose Christ is the same as our own.
Yea! I ween the star spaces are teeming
With the gladness of life and of love.
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