place
  Within life’s mighty symphony; the charm
  Of truth attunes them, and the hearing ear
  Finds pleasure in their rude sincerity. 
  Even the broken and tumultuous noise
  That rises from great cities, where the heart
  Of human toil is beating heavily
  With ceaseless murmurs of the labouring pulse,
  Is not a discord; for it speaks to life
  Of life unfeigned, and full of hopes and fears,
  And touched through all the trouble of its notes
  With something real and therefore glorious.

  One voice alone of all that sound on earth,
  Is hateful to the soul, and full of pain,—­
  The voice of falsehood.  So when Vera heard
  This mocking voice, and knew that it was false;
  When first she learned that human lips can speak
  The thing that is not, and betray the ear
  Of simple trust with treachery of words;
  The joy of hearing withered in her heart. 
  For now she felt that faithless messengers
  Could pass the open and unguarded gates
  Of sound, and bring a message all untrue,
  Or half a truth that makes the deadliest lie,
  Or idle babble, neither false nor true,
  But hollow to the heart, and meaningless. 
  She heard the flattering voices of deceit,
  That mask the hidden purposes of men
  With fair attire of favourable words,
  And hide the evil in the guise of good: 
  The voices vain and decorous and smooth,
  That fill the world with empty-hearted talk;
  The foolish voices, wandering and confused,
  That never clearly speak the thing they would,
  But ramble blindly round their true intent
  And tangle sense in hopeless coils of sound,—­
  All these she heard, and with a deep mistrust
  Began to doubt the value of her gift. 
  It seemed as if the world, the living world,
  Sincere, and vast, and real, were still concealed,
  And she, within the prison of her soul,
  Still waiting silently to hear the voice
  Of perfect knowledge and of perfect peace.

So with the burden of her discontent
She turned to seek the Master once again,
And found him sitting in the market-place,
Half-hidden in the shadow of a porch,
Alone among the careless crowd. 
She spoke: 
“Thy gift was great, dear Master, and my heart
Has thanked thee many times because I hear
But I have learned that hearing is not all;
For underneath the speech of men, there flows
Another current of their hidden thoughts;
Behind the mask of language I perceive
The eyes of things unsaid. 
Touch me again,
O Master, with thy liberating hand,
And free me from the bondage of deceit. 
Open another gate, and let me hear
The secret thoughts and purposes of men;
For only thus my heart will be at rest,
And only thus, at last, I shall perceive
The mystery and the meaning of the world.”