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 believe?

    Not on the vulgar mass
    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: 

    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: 

    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.

    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;
  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.

    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.

    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?

    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 aglow! 
  Thou, heaven’s consummate cup, what needst thou with earth’s wheel?

    But I need, now as then,
    Thee, God, who mouldest men;
  And since, not even while the whirl was worst,
    Did I—­to the wheel of life
    With shapes and colors rife,
  Bound dizzily—­mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: 

    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!

ROBERT BROWNING.

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