feed
  That never-flowering vine, whose tendrils clung
  With strangling touch around the bloom of life
  And made it wither.  Vera could not rest
  Within the limits of her silent world;
  Along its dumb and desolate paths she roamed
  A captive, looking sadly for escape.

  Now in those distant days, and in that land
  Remote, there lived a Master wonderful,
  Who knew the secret of all life, and could,
  With gentle touches and with potent words,
  Open all gates that ever had been sealed,
  And loose all prisoners whom Fate had bound. 
  Obscure he dwelt, not in the wilderness,
  But in a hut among the throngs of men,
  Concealed by meekness and simplicity. 
  And ever as he walked the city streets,
  Or sat in quietude beside the sea,
  Or trod the hillsides and the harvest fields,
  The multitude passed by and knew him not. 
  But there were some who knew, and turned to him
  For help; and unto all who asked, he gave. 
  Thus Vera came, and found him in the field,
  And knew him by the pity in his face. 
  She knelt to him and held him by one hand,
  And laid the other hand upon her lips
  In mute entreaty.  Then she lifted up
  The coils of hair that hung about her neck,
  And bared the beauty of the gates of sound,—­
  Those virgin gates through which no voice had passed,—­
  She made them bare before the Master’s sight,
  And looked into the kindness of his face
  With eyes that spoke of all her prisoned pain,
  And told her great desire without a word.

  The Master waited long in silent thought,
  As one reluctant to bestow a gift,
  Not for the sake of holding back the thing
  Entreated, but because he surely knew
  Of something better that he fain would give
  If only she would ask it.  Then he stooped
  To Vera, smiling, touched her ears and spoke: 
  “Open, fair gates, and you, reluctant doors,
  Within the ivory labyrinth of the ear,
  Let fall the bar of silence and unfold! 
  Enter, you voices of all living things,
  Enter the garden sealed,—­but softly, slowly,
  Not with a noise confused and broken tumult,—­
  Come in an order sweet as I command you,
  And bring the double gift of speech and hearing.”

  Vera began to hear.  At first the wind
  Breathed a low prelude of the birth of sound,
  As if an organ far away were touched
  By unseen fingers; then the little stream
  That hurried down the hillside, swept the harp
  Of music into merry, tinkling notes;
  And then the lark that poised above her head
  On wings a-quiver, overflowed the air
  With showers of song; and one by one the tones
  Of all things living, in an order sweet,
  Without confusion and with deepening power,
  Entered the garden sealed.  And last of all
  The Master’s voice, the human voice divine,
  Passed through the gates and called her by her name,
  And Vera heard.