Upon the liquid tide of air
It swayed beside a dappled cloud:
It seemed athwart the sun to fare
Full of strong flight, as though endowed
With vibrant life. Buoyed in the sky
It swam, and hardly might the eye
Traverse the fields of ambient light
To scan its heaven aspiring height.
And, like a spider's web, there slipped
A pulsing earthward thread, that dipped
In tenuous line, that throbbed and spoke,
Down through the sunlight and the smoke,
Down to a small and blackened brood
Of puny city waifs that stood,
And–lost to hunger, want or time–
Stared, rigid, through the city's grime
At the far envoy they had given
As hostage to the winds of heaven.

Thus may the Soul to heights elysian
Send argosies of dream and vision:
Send far flung messengers that rise
Strong pinioned, cleaving to the skies,
To float amid the poisèd spheres,
Beyond the tumult of the years,
Till,–down the rare and rainbow line
That earthward trails from fields divine–
Shall pulse the throb of mystic wings,
And faint, sweet, rapturous whisperings
Of incommunicable things.