r sighed, for sorrow filled his breast;
Turned from the scene and sank to deeper rest.
"Come!" cried a low voice full of music sweet,
"Come!" and an angel touched his trembling feet.
Down the steep hills they wend their toilsome way,
Cross the vast plain that on their journey lay;
Gain the dark city, through its suburbs roam,
And pause at length within the dreamer's home.

Again he stood at his anvil good
With an angel by his side,
And rested his sledge on its iron edge
And blew up his bellows wide;
He kindled the flame till the white heat came,
Then murmured in accent low:
"All ready am I your bidding to try
So far as a mortal may go."

'Midst the heat and the smoke the angel spoke,
And breathed in his softest tone,
"Heaven caught up your prayer on the evening air
As it mounted toward the throne.
God weaveth no task for mortals to ask
Beyond a mortal's control,
And with hammer and tongs you shall right the wrongs
That encompass the human soul.

"But go you first forth 'mong the sons of the earth,
And bring me a human heart
That throbs for its kind, spite of weather and wind,
And acts still a brother's part.
The night groweth late, but here will I wait
Till dawn streak the eastern skies;
And lest you should fail, spread _my_ wings on the gale,
And search with _my_ angel eyes."

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 di