Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: 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, Skull-things in order grim Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress? XXX. Look not thou down but up! To uses of a cup, The festal board, lamp's flash, and trumpet's peal, The Master's lips aglow! Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel? XXXI. But I need, now as then, Thee, God, who moldest men ! And since, not even while the whirl was worst, Did I,--to the wheel of life With shapes and colors rife, Bound dizzily,--mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: XXXII. 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! EPILOGUE. FIRST SPEAKER, as David. I. ON the first of the Feast of Feasts, When the Levites joined the priests II. When the thousands, rear and van, (Look, gesture, thought, and word), In praising and thanking the Lord, III. When the singers lift up their voice, IV. Then the Temple filled with a cloud, Porch bent and pillar bowed : For the presence of the Lord, In the glory of His cloud, Had filled the House of the Lord. SECOND SPEAKER, as Renan. Gone now! All gone across the dark so far, Which came, stood, opened once! We gazed our fill With upturned faces on as real a Face That, stooping from grave music and mild fire, Took in our homage, made a visible place Through many a depth of glory, gyre on gyre, And shriek, and throw the arms protesting wide, The rims contracted as the rays retired; Some vestige of a Face no pangs convulse, Venture to probe again the vault bereft Of all now save the lesser lights, a mist Of multitudinous points, yet suns, men say— And this leaps ruby, this lurks amethyst, But where may hide what came and loved our clay? How shall the sage detect in yon expanse The star which chose to stoop and stay for us? Nor doubt that, were mankind inert and numb, Sad sway of scepter whose mere touch appalls, THIRD SPEAKER. I. Witless alike of will and way divine, How heaven's high with earth's low should interwine! Friends, I have seen through your eyes:. now use mine! II. Take the least man of all mankind, as I; Look at his head and heart, find how and why He differs from his fellows utterly: III. Then, like me, watch when nature by degrees Toward some elected point of central rock, V. With radiance caught for the occasion,-hues VI. The mimic monarch of the whirpool, king VII. And hasten off, to play again elsewhere VIII. When you see what I tell you,-nature dance IX. His worth, and-once the life, his product, gained- X. When you acknowledge that one world could do All the diverse work, old yet ever new, Divide us, each from other, me from you, XI. Why! where's the need of Temple, when the walls XII. That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows, Or decomposes but to recompose, Become my universe that feels and knows! OH the old wall here! How I could pass My feet confined to a plot of grass, II. |