Of the soil, ... but of the sweat in tilling it,— Since this is now-a-days turned privilege, To have only God’s curse on us, and not man’s. Such work I have for doing, elbow-deep In social problems,—as you tie your rhymes, To draw my uses to cohere with needs, And bring the uneven world back to its round; Or, failing so much, fill up, bridge at least To smoother issues, some abysmal cracks And feuds of earth, intestine heats have made To keep men separate,—using sorry shifts Of hospitals, almshouses, infant schools, And other practical stuff of partial good, You lovers of the beautiful and whole, Despise by system.’ ‘_I_ despise? The scorn Is yours, my cousin. Poets become such, Through scorning nothing. You decry them for The good of beauty, sung and taught by them, While they respect your practical partial good As being a part of beauty’s self. Adieu! When God helps all the workers for his world, The singers shall have help of Him, not last.’ He smiled as men smile when they will not speak Because of something bitter in the thought; And still I feel his melancholy eyes Look judgment on me. It is seven years since: I know not if ’twas pity or ’twas scorn Has made them so far-reaching: judge it ye Who have had to do with pity more than love. And scorn than hatred. I am used, since then, To other ways, from equal men. But so, Even so, we let go hands, my cousin and I, And, in between us, rushed the torrent-world To blanch our faces like divided rocks, And bar for ever mutual sight and touch Except through swirl of spray and all that roar. THIRD BOOK. ‘TO-DAY thou girdest up thy loins thyself, And goest where thou wouldest: presently Others shall gird thee,’ said the Lord, ‘to go Where thou would’st not.’ He spoke to Peter thus, To signify the death which he should die When crucified head downwards. If He spoke To Peter then, He speaks to us the same; The word suits many different martyrdoms, And signifies a multiform of death, Although we scarcely die apostles, we, And have mislaid the keys of heaven and earth. For ’tis not in mere death that men die most; And, after our first girding of the loins In youth’s fine linen and fair broidery, To run up hill and meet the rising sun, We are apt to sit tired, patient as a fool, While others gird us with the violent bands Of social figments, feints, and formalisms, Reversing our straight nature, lifting up Our base needs, keeping down our lofty thoughts, Head downward on the cross-sticks of the world. Yet He can pluck us from that shameful cross. God, set our feet low and our forehead high, And show us how a man was made to walk!