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Was the thing done?—­then, what’s to do again? 
See, in the chequered pavement opposite,
Suppose the artist made a perfect rhomb,
And next a lozenge, then a trapezoid—­
He did not overlay them, superimpose
The new upon the old and blot it out,
But laid them on a level in his work,
Making at last a picture; there it lies. 
So, first the perfect separate forms were made,
The portions of mankind; and after, so, 90
Occurred the combination of the same. 
For where had been a progress, otherwise? 
Mankind, made up of all the single men—­
In such a synthesis the labor ends. 
Now mark me! those divine men of old time
Have reached, thou sayest well, each at one point
The outside verge that rounds our faculty;
And where they reached, who can do more than reach? 
It takes but little water just to touch
At some one point the inside of a sphere, 100
And, as we turn the sphere, touch all the rest
In due succession:  but the finer air
Which not so palpably nor obviously,
Though no less universally, can touch
The whole circumference of that emptied sphere,
Fills it more fully than the water did;
Holds thrice the weight of water in itself
Resolved into a subtler element. 
And yet the vulgar call the sphere first full
Up to the visible height—­and after, void; 110
Not knowing air’s more hidden properties. 
And thus our soul, misknown, cries out to Zeus
To vindicate his purpose in our life: 
Why stay we on the earth unless to grow? 
Long since, I imaged, wrote the fiction out,
That he or other god descended here
And, once for all, showed simultaneously
What, in its nature, never can be shown,
Piecemeal or in succession;—­showed, I say,
The worth both absolute and relative 120
Of all his children from the birth of time,
His instruments for all appointed work. 
I now go on to image—­might we hear
The judgment which should give the due to each,
Show where the labor lay and where the ease,
And prove Zeus’ self, the latent everywhere! 
This is a dream;—­but no dream, let us hope,
That years and days, the summers and the springs,
Follow each other with unwaning powers. 
The grapes which dye thy wine are richer far, 130
Through culture, than the wild wealth of the rock;
The wave plum than the savage-tasted drupe;
The pastured honey-bee drops choicer sweet;
The flowers turn double, and the leaves turn flowers;
That young and tender crescent-moon, thy slave,
Sleeping above her robe as buoyed by clouds,
Refines upon the women of my youth. 
What, and the soul alone deteriorates? 
I have not chanted verse like Homer, no—­
Nor swept string like Terpander, no—­nor carved 140
And painted men like Phidias and his friend;
I am not great as they are, point by point.