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Now, who shall arbitrate?

XXII.

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;

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,

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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,

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This I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 150

XXVI.

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,

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'Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to

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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
Machinery just meant

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,

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!

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Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with

earth's wheel?

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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!
My times be in Thy hand!

Perfect the cup as planned!

Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same!

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Thus Karshook, the Hiram's-Hammer,
The Right-hand Temple-column,
Taught babes in grace their grammar,
And struck the simple, solemn.

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'CHILDE ROLAND TO THE DARK

TOWER CAME.'

(See Edgar's song in 'LEAR.')

I.

My first thought was, he lied in every word,
That hoary cripple, with malicious eye
Askance to watch the working of his lie
On mine, and mouth scarce able to afford
Suppression of the glee, that pursed and scored
Its edge, at one more victim gained thereby.

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II.

What else should he be set for, with his staff?
What, save to waylay with his lies, ensnare
All travellers who might find him posted there,
And ask the road? I guessed what skull-like laugh
Would break, what crutch 'gin write my epitaph
For pastime in the dusty thoroughfare,

III.

If at his counsel I should turn aside
Into that ominous tract which, all agree,
Hides the Dark Tower. Yet acquiescingly

I did turn as he pointed; neither pride
Nor hope rekindling at the end descried,

So much as gladness that some end might be.

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