Or with many a lisp of wonder, draw the music from the reed.
“Let your playful hand in cunning devise a giant eye;
And in long hours of frolic, guess the secrets of the sky;
Or peer with curious longing in the busy under-bourne,
Where microscopic beings are playing in their turn.
“And raise Love’s swaying ladder to the dizzy heights of woe;
And walk o’er desert places where the thorns and thistles grow,
When the man-child gropes and stumbles and holds his quivering breath,
As he meets within the shadows his last playfellow, “Death.”
I heard the Spirit singing: “Laughter is the strongest prayer,