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12.

Let us not always say

"Spite of this flesh to-day

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole!"

As the bird wings and sings,

Let us cry "All good things

Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps

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Life's struggle having so far reached its term:

Thence shall I pass, approved

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From the developed brute; a God though in the germ.

And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere I be gone

14.

Once more on my adventure brave and new:

Fearless and unperplexed,

When I wage battle next,

What weapons to select, what armor to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try

My gain or loss thereby;

15.

Be 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.

16.

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,

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Take it and try its worth: here dies another day."

So, still within this life,

Though lifted o'er its strife,

17.

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."

18.

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

19.

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 waitedst age; wait death nor be afraid!

Enough now, if the Right

And Good and Infinite

20.

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,

21.

Severed great minds from small,

Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I, the world arraigned,

Were they, my soul disdained,

Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at

last!

22.

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?

23.

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 straightway to its mind, could value in a trice:

24.

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

amount:

25.

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.

26.

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!"

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