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 wind makes its round,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

XXVII

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.

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 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?

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:

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!

CONFESSIONS

I

What is he buzzing in my ears?

"Now that I come to die,

Do I view the world as a vale of tears?"

Ah, reverend sir, not I!

II

(1864.)

What I viewed there once, what I view again
Where the physic bottles stand

On the table's edge, is a suburb lane,
With a wall to my bedside hand.

III

That lane sloped, much as the bottles do,
From a house you could descry

O'er the garden-wall: is the curtain blue
Or green to a healthy eye?

IV

To mine, it serves for the old June weather
Blue above lane and wall;

And that farthest bottle labelled "Ether"
Is the house o'ertopping all.

V

At a terrace, somewhere near the stopper,
They watched for me, one June,
A girl: I know, sir, it 's improper,
My poor mind 's out of tune.

VI

Only, there was a way

Close by the side, to dodge

you crept

Eyes in the house, two eyes except:

They styled their house "The Lodge."

VII

What right had a lounger up their lane?

But, by creeping very close,

With the good wall's help,-their eyes might strain And stretch themselves to Oes,

VIII

Yet never catch her and me together,
As she left the attic, there,

By the rim of the bottle labelled "Ether,"
And stole from stair to stair,

IX

And stood by the rose-wreathed gate. Alas,

We loved, sir-used to meet:

How sad and bad and mad it was

But then, how it was sweet!

(1864.)

THE RING AND THE BOOK

(Dedication)

O lyric love, half angel and half bird
And all a wonder and a wild desire,-
Boldest of hearts that ever braved the sur,
Took sanctuary within the holier blue,
And sang a kindred soul out to his face,—

Yet human at the red-ripe of the heart

When the first summons from the darkling earth Reached thee amid thy chambers, blanched their blue, And bared them of the glory-—to drop down,

To toil for man, to suffer or to die,—

This is the same voice: can thy soul know change?
Hail then, and harken from the realms of help!
Never may I commence my song, my due
To God who best taught song by gift of thee,
Except with bent head and beseeching hand-
That still, despite the distance and the dark,
What was, again may be; some interchange
Of grace, some splendour once thy very thought,
Some benediction anciently thy smile:
-Never conclude, but raising hand and head
Thither where eyes, that cannot reach, yet yearn
For all hope, all sustainment, all reward,
Their utmost up and on,—so blessing back

In those thy realms of help, that heaven thy home,
Some whiteness which, I judge, thy face makes proud,
Some wanness where, I think, thy foot may fall!

(1868.)

THE HOUSEHOLDER

(Epilogue to Fifine at the Fair)

I

Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone:
Dreary, weary with the long day's work:
Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone:

Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk;
When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry,

Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!— "What, and is it really you again?" quoth I:

"I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.

II

"Never mind, hie away from this old house—

Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and shame! Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse!

Let them every devil of the night-lay claim, Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me! Goodbye! God be their guard from`disturbance at their glee, Till, crash, down comes the carcass in a heap!" quoth I: "Nay, but there's a decency required!" quoth She.

III

"Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days, nights!
All the neighbour-talk with man and maid—such men!
All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-sights:
All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof; and then
All the fancies . . . Who were they had leave, dared try
Darker arts that almost struck despair in me?

If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I:
'And was I so better off up there?" quoth She.