Not once beat “ Praise be Thine!

“I see the whole design, “I, who saw power, see now love perfect too:

“Perfect I call Thy plan:

“Thanks that I was a man! “Maker, remake, complete, I trust what Thou

shalt do!"
For pleasant is this flesh;

Our soul, in its rose-mesh
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest;

Would we some prize might hold

To match those manifold Possessions of the brute,-gain most, as we did

best!

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 soul!" Therefore I summon age

To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term:

Thence shall I pass, approved

A man, for aye removed
From the developed brute; a god though in the

germ.
And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere I be gone
Once more on ny adventure brave and new :

Fearless and unperplexed.

When I wage battle next, What weapons to select, what armour to indue.

Youth ended, I shall try

My gain or loss thereby;
Leave 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.
For note, when evening shuts,

A certain moment cuts
The deed off, calls the glory from the grey:

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,

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!
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

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:
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:

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.

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 entered into thee,

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, would fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,
Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im-

pressed.

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?

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 need'st

thou with earth's wheel? But I need, now as then,

Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst,

Did 1,—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!

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

same!

A DEATH IN THE DESERT
SUPPOSED of Pamphylax the Antiochene:

It is a parchment, of my rolls the fifth,
Hath three skins glued together, is all Greek
And goeth from Epsilon down to Mu:
Lies second in the surnamed Chosen Chest,
Stained and conserved with juice of terebinth,
Covered with cloth of hair, and lettered Xi,
From Xanthus, my wife's uncle, now at peace: