XXI.

Be there, for once and all,

Severed great minds from small,

Announced to each his station in the Past!
Was I, the world arraigned,

Were they, my soul disdained,

Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last!

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?

XXIII.

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:

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,

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,

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

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,

'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,

Scull-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.

Only, there was a way

VI.

... you crept

Close by the side, to dodge

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 sun,
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.)