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,
Though lifted o’er its strife,
Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last,
“This rage was right i’ the main,
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, through acts uncouth,
Toward making, than repose on aught found made: 
So, better, age, exempt
From strife, should know, than tempt
Further.  Thou waitedest age:  wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right
And Good and Infinite
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,
Sever’d great minds from small,
Announced to each his station in the Past! 
Was I, the world arraigned,
Were they, my soul disdain’d,
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
Match me:  we all surmise,
They this thing, and I that:  whom shall my soul believe?

Not on the vulgar mass
Call’d “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 fail’d to plumb,
So pass’d in making up the main account;
All instincts immature,
All purposes unsure,
That weigh’d not as his work, yet swell’d the man’s amount: 

Thoughts hardly to be pack’d
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 enter’d into thee,
That was, is, and shall be: 
Time’s wheel runs back or stops:  Potter and clay endure.

He fix’d 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 impress’d.