And lo! he heard
The sudden singing of a bird,
A snow-white bird, that from a cloud
Dropped down,
And among the branches brown
Sat singing
So sweet, and clear, and loud,
It seemed a thousand harp strings ringing. 
And the Monk Felix closed his book,
And long, long,
With rapturous look,
He listened to the song,
And hardly breathed or stirred,
Until he saw, as in a vision,
The land Elysian,
And in the heavenly city heard
Angelic feet
Fall on the golden flagging of the street. 
And he would fain
Have caught the wondrous bird,
But strove in vain;
For it flew away, away,
Far over hill and dell,
And instead of its sweet singing
He heard the convent bell
Suddenly in the silence ringing
For the service of noonday. 
And he retraced
His pathway homeward sadly and in haste.

In the convent there was a change! 
He looked for each well known face,
But the faces were new and strange;
New figures sat in the oaken stalls,
New voices chaunted in the choir,
Yet the place was the same place,
The same dusky walls
Of cold, gray stone,
The same cloisters and belfry and spire.

A stranger and alone
Among that brotherhood
The Monk Felix stood
“Forty years,” said a Friar. 
“Have I been Prior
Of this convent in the wood,
But for that space
Never have I beheld thy face!”

The heart of the Monk Felix fell: 
And he answered with submissive tone,
“This morning, after the hour of Prime,
I left my cell,
And wandered forth alone,
Listening all the time
To the melodious singing
Of a beautiful white bird,
Until I heard
The bells of the convent ringing
Noon from their noisy towers,
It was as if I dreamed;
For what to me had seemed
Moments only, had been hours!”

“Years!” said a voice close by. 
It was an aged monk who spoke,
From a bench of oak
Fastened against the wall;—­
He was the oldest monk of all. 
For a whole century
Had he been there,
Serving God in prayer,
The meekest and humblest of his creatures. 
He remembered well the features
Of Felix, and he said,
Speaking distinct and slow: 
“One hundred years ago,
When I was a novice in this place,
There was here a monk, full of God’s grace,
Who bore the name
Of Felix, and this man must be the same.”

And straightway
They brought forth to the light of day
A volume old and brown,
A huge tome, bound
With brass and wild-boar’s hide,
Therein were written down
The names of all who had died
In the convent, since it was edified. 
And there they found,
Just as the old monk said,
That on a certain day and date,
One hundred years before,
Had gone forth from the convent gate
The Monk Felix, and never more
Had entered that sacred door. 
He had been counted among the dead! 
And they knew, at last,
That, such had been the power
Of that celestial and immortal song,
A hundred years had passed,
And had not seemed so long
As a single hour!