You were going to give some directions to the bailiff about its churchyard, were you not, the morning of the thunder ?" "I was going to tell him I wanted it turned into a wilderness of rose-trees, and that the plough must never come within three yards of it." "Listen!" said the raven, seeming to hold his breath.
I listened, and heard--was it the sighing of a far-off musical wind--or the ghost of a music that had once been glad?
Or did I indeed hear anything?
"They go there still," said the raven.
"Who goes there?
and where do they go ?" I asked.
"Some of the people who used to pray there, go to the ruins still," he replied.

"But they will not go much longer, I think." "What makes them go now ?" "They need help from each other to get their thinking done, and their feelings hatched, so they talk and sing together; and then, they say, the big thought floats out of their hearts like a great ship out of the river at high water." "Do they pray as well as sing ?" "No; they have found that each can best pray in his own silent heart .-- Some people are always at their prayers .-- Look! look! There goes one!" He pointed right up into the air.

A snow-white pigeon was mounting, with quick and yet quicker wing-flap, the unseen spiral of an ethereal stair.
The sunshine flashed quivering from its wings.
"I see a pigeon!" I said.
"Of course you see a pigeon," rejoined the raven, "for there is the pigeon! I see a prayer on its way .-- I wonder now what heart is that dove's mother! Some one may have come awake in my cemetery!" "How can a pigeon be a prayer ?" I said.

"I understand, of course, how it should be a fit symbol or likeness for one; but a live pigeon to come out of a heart!" "It MUST puzzle you! It cannot fail to do so!" "A prayer is a thought, a thing spiritual!" I pursued.
"Very true! But if you understood any world besides your own, you would understand your own much better .-- When a heart is really alive, then it is able to think live things.

There is one heart all whose thoughts are strong, happy creatures, and whose very dreams are lives.