In Warehouse And Office

How can the man whose uneventful days,
Each like the other, are obscurely spent
Amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze
Upon a lofty goal serenely bent?
Or he who sedulously tells and groups
Their minted shadows with deft finger-tips?
Or who above the shadow's shadow stoops,
And dips his pen and writes, and writes and dips?

How can he? Yet some such have been and are,
Prophets and seers in deed, if not in word,
And poets of a faery land afar,
By incommunicable music stirred;
Feasting the soul apart with what it craves,
Their occupation's masters, not its slaves.