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What? (To Ethel)
By Abram Joseph Ryan
At the golden gates of the visions
I knelt me adown one day;
But sudden my prayer was a silence,
For I heard from the "Far away"
The murmur of many voices
And a silvery censer's sway.
I bowed in awe, and I listened --
The deeps of my soul were stirred,
But deepest of all was the meaning
Of the far-off music I heard,
And yet it was stiller than silence,
Its notes were the "Dream of a Word".
A word that is whispered in heaven,
But cannot be heard below;
It lives on the lips of the angels
Where'er their pure wings glow;
Yet only the "Dream of its Echo"
Ever reaches this valley of woe.
But I know the word and its meaning;
I reached to its height that day,
When prayer sank into a silence
And my heart was so far away;
But I may not murmur the music,
Nor the word may my lips yet say.
But some day far in the future,
And up from the dust of the dead,
And out of my lips when speechless
The mystical word shall be said,
'Twill come to thee, still as a spirit,
When the soul of the bard has fled.
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