Youth ended, I shall try
My gain or loss thereby;
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold: 
And I shall weigh the same,
Give life its praise or blame: 
Young, all lay in dispute; I shall know, being old. 90

For, note when evening shuts,
A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray: 
A whisper from the west
Shoots—­“Add this to the rest,
Take it and try its worth:  here dies another day.”

So, still within this life,
Tho’ lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
“This rage was right i’ the main, 100
That acquiescence vain: 
The Future I may face now I have proved the Past.”

For more is not reserved
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
Should strive, thro’ acts uncouth, 110
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
Be named deg. here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, deg.117
With knowledge absolute,
Subject to no dispute
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone. 120

Be there, for once and all,
Severed great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past! 
Was I, deg. the world arraigned, deg.124
Were they, my soul disdained,
Right?  Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

Now, who shall arbitrate? 
Ten men love what I hate,
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive;
Ten, who in ears and eyes 130
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 straight way to its mind, could value in a trice: 

But all, the world’s coarse thumb
And finger failed to plumb, 140
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 deg.:  deg.144

Thoughts hardly to be packed
Into a narrow act,
Fancies that broke thro’ language and escaped: 
All I could never be,
All, men ignored in me,
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 150