Ay, note that Potter’s wheel, deg. deg.151
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, 160
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 tho’ the earlier grooves
Which ran the laughing loves 170
Around thy base, no longer pause and press deg.? deg.171
What tho’ about thy rim,
Scull-things in order grim
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress deg.? deg.174

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 earth’s wheel? 180

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 colours 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! 190
Perfect the cup as planned! 
Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

* * * * *

A GRAMMARIAN’S FUNERAL

SHORTLY AFTER THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING IN EUROPE

Let us begin and carry up this corpse,
      Singing together. 
Leave we the common crofts, the vulgar thorpes,
      Each in its tether
Sleeping safe on the bosom of the plain,
      Cared-for till cock-crow: 
Look out if yonder be not day again
      Rimming the rock-row! 
That’s the appropriate country; there, man’s thought,
      Rarer, intenser, 10
Self-gathered for an outbreak, as it ought,
      Chafes in the censer.