And I shall thereupon

Take rest, ere I be gone

Once more on my adventure brave and new:

Fearless and unperplex'd,

When I wage battle next,

What weapons to select, what armor 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 gray:

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,

Tho 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, thro' acts uncouth,

Toward making, than repose on aught found made:

So, better, age, exempt

From strife, should know, that tempt

Further. Thou waited 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,

Sever'd great minds from small,

Announced to each his station in the Past!

Was I, the world arraign'd,

Were they, my soul disdain 'd,

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?

H

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 fail'd to plumb,

So pass'd in making up the main account;

All instincts immature,

All purposes unsure,

That weigh'd not as his work, yet swell'd the man's amount:

Thoughts hardly to be pack'd

Into a narrow act,

Fancies that broke thro' 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 enter'd into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fixt 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 imprest.

What tho the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and press?

What tho about thy rim,

Skull-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 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:

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 plann'd!

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

MY NATIVE LAND

Selection from "The Lay of the Last Minstrel"

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

Breathes there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,

This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High tho his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down,
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.