For more is not reserved

18.

To man, with soul just nerved

To act to-morrow what he learns to-day:
Here, work enough to watch

The Master work, and catch

Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's true play.

As it was better, youth

19.

Should strive, through acts uncouth,

Toward making, than repose on aught found made;

So, better, age, exempt

From strife, should know, than tempt

Further. Thou waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right

And Good and Infinite

20.

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own,

With knowledge absolute,

Subject to no dispute

From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone.

Be there, for once and all,

21.

Severed great minds from small,

Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I, the world arraigned,

Were they, my soul disdained,

1

Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at

last!

22.

Now, who shall arbitrate ?

Ten men love what I hate,

Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;

Ten, who in ears and eyes

Match me we all surmise,

They, this thing, and I, that: whom shall my soul

Called "work," must sentence pass,

Things done, that took the eye and had the price;

O'er which, from level stand,

The low world laid its hand.

Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

24.

But all, the world's coarse thumb

And finger failed to plumb,

So passed in making up the main account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's

amount:

25.

Thoughts hardly to be packed

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke through language and escaped;

All I could never be,

All, men ignored in me,

This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher

shaped.

26.

Ay, note that Potter's wheel,

That metaphor! and feel

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,

Thou, to whom fools propound,

When the wine makes its round,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize

to-day!"

Fool! All that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;

27.

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure:

What entered into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay

endure.

28.

He fixed thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

29.

What though the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and press ?

What though, about thy rim,

Scull-things in order grim

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

30.

Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with

Thee, God, who mouldest men;

And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

Did I,-to the wheel of life

With shapes and colours rife,

Bound dizzily,-mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst:

32.

So, take and use Thy work!

Amend what flaws may lurk,

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim! My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!