# Littell's Living Age/Volume 126/Issue 1633/Song of a Fellow-Worker

* SONG OF A FELLOW-WORKER
* I found a fellow-worker when I deemed I toiled alone:
* My toil was fashioning thought and sound, and his was hewing stone;
* I worked in the palace of my brain, he in the common street,
* And it seemed his toil was great and hard, while mine was great and sweet.
* I said, O fellow-worker, yea, for I am a worker too.
* The heart nigh fails me many a day, but how is it with you?
* For while I toil great tears of joy will sometimes fill my eyes.
* And when I form my perfect work it lives and never dies.
* I carve the marble of pure thought until the thought takes form,
* Until it gleams before my soul and makes the world grow warm;
* Until there comes the glorious voice and words that seem divine,
* And the music reaches all men's hearts and draws them into mine.
* And yet for days it seems my heart shall blossom never more,
* And the burden of my loneliness lies on me very sore:
* Therefore, O hewer of the stones that pave base human ways.
* How canst thou bear the years till death, made of such thankless days?
* Then he replied: Ere sunrise, when the pale lips of the day
* Sent forth an earnest thrill of breath at warmth of the first ray,
* A great thought rose within me, how, while men asleep had lain.
* The thousand labours of the world had grown up once again.
* The sun grew on the world, and on my soul the thought grew too —
* A great appalling sun, to light my soul the long day through.
* I felt the world's whole burden for a moment, then began
* With man's gigantic strength to do the labour of one man.
* I went forth hastily, and lo! I met a hundred men.
* The worker with the chisel and the worker with the pen, —
* The restless toilers after good, who sow and never reap.
* And one who maketh music for their souls that may not sleep.
* Each passed me with a dauntless look, and my undaunted eyes
* Were almost softened as they passed with tears that strove to rise
* At sight of all those labours, and because that every one,
* Ay, the greatest, would be greater if my little were undone.
* They passed me, having faith in me, and in our several ways.
* Together we began to-day as on the other days:
* I felt their mighty hands at work, and, as the day wore through.
* Perhaps they felt that even I was helping somewhat too:
* Perhaps they felt, as with those hands they lifted mightily
* The burden once more laid upon the world so heavily.
* That while they nobly held it as each man can do and bear.
* It did not wholly fall my side as though no man were there.
* And so we toil together many a day from morn till night,
* I in the lower depths of life, they on the lovely height;
* For though the common stones are mine, and they have lofty cares,
* Their work begins where this leaves off, and mine is part of theirs.
* And 'tis not wholly mine or theirs I think of through the day,
* But the great eternal thing we make together, I and they;
* Far in the sunset I behold a city that man owns,
* Made fair with all their nobler toil, built of my common stones.
* Then noonward, as the task grows light with all the labour done.
* The single thought of all the day becomes a joyous one;
* For, rising in my heart at last where it has lain so long,
* It thrills up seeking for a voice, and grows almost a song.
* But when the evening comes, indeed, the words have taken wing.
* The thought sings in me still, but I am all too tired to sing;
* Therefore, O you my friend, who serve the world with minstrelsy,
* Among our fellow-workers' songs make that one song for me.
* Arthur O'Shaughnessy
* Athenæum.