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: XXIV. 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 account: XXV. 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.1 XXVI. Ay, note that Potter's wheel,2 That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay, Thou to whom fools profound, When the wine makes its round, "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!" 1 The last four stanzas embody the profound philosophy of the poet and well deserve careful study. 2 The figure of the Potter's wheel is taken from Isaiah Ixiv. 8. XXVII. 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.' XXVIII. He fixed thee, mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : To give thy soul its bent, Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. XXIX. 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? 2 Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup,3 XXX. 2 1 Thy life is the clay God is the Potter; and time is the wheel. The first two are the enduring elements Time shall turn back again or stop. The lighter influences of youth have ceased their sway, and the sterner forces of old age are now moulding you. What then? 3 Observe the comparison between the human life and 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, XXXI. 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,1-mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst. So, take and use Thy work: Amend what flaws may lurk, XXXII. What strain o' the stuff, what warping past the aim !2 Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same. 1 An explanatory clause. The sense is :-" Did I, though bound to the wheel of life, with shapes and colors rife, mistake, etc. 2 Beyond the purpose of the maker. PHEIDIPPIDES. ANALYSIS. THIS poem is based upon an incident related by Herodotus in Book VI, 105, 106. In the year 490 B. C. the Persians invaded Attica and encamped on the plain of Marathon. When the news was received in Athens the generals sent a swift messenger to Sparta, which was about 140 miles distant, to beg for assistance. The legend as given by Herodotus is as follows: "And first, while the generals were yet in the city, they dispatched a herald to Sparta, one Phidippides, an Athenian, who was a courier by profession. This man, then, as Phidippides himself said and reported to the Athenians, Pan met near Mount Parthenon, above Tegea; and Pan, calling out the name of Phidippides, bade him ask the Athenians, why they paid no attention to him, who was well inclined to the Athenians, and had often been useful to them, and would be so hereafter.*** This Phidippides, being sent by the generals at that time when he said Pan appeared to him, arrived in Sparta the following day after his departure from the city of the Athenians, and on coming in presence of the magistrates, he said:-Lacedæmonians, the Athenians entreat you to assist them, and not to suffer the most ancient city among the Greeks to fall into bondage to barbarians; for Etruria is already reduced to slavery, and Greece has become weaker by the loss of a renowned city.' "He accordingly delivered the message according to his instructions, and they resolved indeed to assist the Athenians; but it was out of their power to do so immediately, as they were unwilling to violate the law; for it was the ninth day of the current month, and they said they could no march out on the ninth day, the moon's circle not being full. They therefore waited for the full moon.' There seems to be no historical foundation for the closing incident of the poem. PHEIDIPPIDES. Χαίρετε, νικῶμεν.1 FIRST I salute this soil of the blessed, river and rock! -Ay, with Zeus the Defender, with Hers of the ægis1 and spear! Also, ye of the bow and the buskin, praised be your peer, Now, henceforth, and forever,-O latest to whom I upraise Hand and heart and voice! For Athens, leave pasture and flock! Present to help, potent to save, Pan-patron I call! Archons of Athens, topped by the tettix, see, I return! 1 "Rejoice, we conquer." 2 From the Greek word "daimon" meaning a spirit. 3 Pallas-Athene, the guardian-deity of Athens, and the only deity whose authority was equal to that of Zeus. 4 A wonderful shield given to Athena by her father, Zeus. 5 Artemis (Diana) the goddess of hunting. 6 A grasshopper. The Athenians sometimes wore golden grasshoppers in their hair as badges of honor, because these insects were supposed to spring from the ground, and they thus signified that they were sprung from the original inhabitants of the soil. |