The dreamer once more passed the open door,
But plumed for an angel's flight;
He sped through the world like a thunderbolt hurled
When the clouds are alive with light;
He followed the sun till his race was won,
And probed every heart and mind;
But in every zone man labored alone
For himself and not for his kind.
All mournful and flushed, his dearest hopes crushed,
The dreamer returned to his home,
And stood in the flare of the forge's red glare,
Besprinkled with dew and foam.
"The heart you have sought must be tempered and taught
In the flame that is all aglow."
"No heart could I find that was true to its kind,
So I left all the world in its woe."
Then the stern angel cried: "In your own throbbing side
Beats a heart that is sound to the core;
Will you give your own life to the edge of the knife
For the widowed, the orphaned, and poor?"
"Most unworthy am I for my brothers to die,
And sinful my sorrowing heart;
But strike, if you will, to redeem or to kill,
With life I am willing to part."
Then he threw ope his vest and bared his broad breast
To the angel's glittering blade;
Soon the swift purple tide gushed a stream red and wide
From the wound that the weapon had made.
With a jerk and a start he then plucked out his heart,
And buried it deep in the flame
That flickered and fell like the flashes of hell
O'er the dreamer's quivering frame.
"Now with hammer and tongs you may right all the wrongs
That environ the human soul;
But first, you must smite with a Vulcan's might
The heart in yon blistering bowl."
Quick the blacksmith arose, and redoubling his blows,
Beat the heart that was all aglow,
Till its fiery scars like a shower of stars
Illumined the night with their flow.
Every sling of his sledge reopened the edge
Of wounds that were healed long ago;
And from each livid chasm leaped forth a phantasm
Of passion, of sin, or of woe.
But he heeded no pain as he hammered amain,
For the angel was holding the heart,
And cried at each blow, "Strike high!" or "Strike low!"
"Strike hither!" or "Yonder apart!"
So he hammered and wrought, and he toiled and fought
Till Aurora peeped over the plain;
When the angel flew by and ascended the sky,
But left on the anvil a chain!
Its links were as bright as heaven's own light,
As pure as the fountain of youth;
And bore on each fold in letters of gold,
This token—Love, Friendship and Truth.
The dreamer awoke, and peered through the smoke
At the anvil that slept by his side;
And then in a wreath of flower-bound sheath,
The triple-linked chain he espied.
Odd Fellowship's gem is that bright diadem,
Our emblem in age and in youth;
For our hearts we must prove in the fire of Love,
And mould with the hammer of Truth.