XXII. 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 XXIII. Called 'work' must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 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, 130 135 140 That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount; 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, 145 This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 150 XXVI. Ay, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel RABBI BEN EZRA. Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay,— Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, 67 155 'Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to 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? Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? XXX. Look thou not 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! 160 165 170 175 Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? 180 XXXI. But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who mouldest men; And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I,-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, XXXII. Amend what flaws may lurk, What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past the aim ! Perfect the cup as planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same! 185 190 BEN KARSHOOK'S WISDOM. I. 'WOULD a man 'scape the rod?' Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, See that he turn to God The day before his death.' Ay, could a man inquire When it shall come!' I say: The Rabbi's eye shoots fire'Then let him turn to-day!' II. Quoth a young Sadducee: Have, as they tell us, souls?' 'Son, there is no reply!' The Rabbi bit his beard: 'Certain, a soul have I We may have none,' he sneer'd. Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer, 5 ΤΟ 15 20 |