But the monument grew, anon to display Above its foundation, Those fair white sides that rose to their station All cunningly wrought into tablet and column. Then children, and others, as childlike as they, Would delight in its beauty; but, doubtful and solemn, The wise were all wary. “A man cannot rate A work till complete,” said they, “so we must wait.” VII. And thus the man grew, And thus did a few Find, thoughtfully plann’d for the wants they divined, His work that is now the pride of his kind. Who prized it at first?— Ah, those little verst In the codes that are current turn first from them all To the herald that comes to trump a new call. Those nearest their youth Live nearest the breasts that glow with the truth, And welcome it gratefully warm from the heart. Earth’s elders and sages, Far off from the place where the springs all start, Scarce ever can prize A stream that supplies A draft less far from its font than their age is. No deeds can course from as grand a source As the life of which they in their youth form’d a part. Naught sparkles as bright To them as the light Of an old, cold, frozen, and crystallized art. But, ah, if you ask them what was true When the words or the ways of their art were new, If you ask them what were the traits it would show Ere the form now frozen no longer could flow, Or how it differ’d in nature from those That spring in the present, when first it rose,— All this their critic cares not to know. He is nothing if not the dog of his day, Who barks or who licks As his master, the world, may make him obey By throwing him bones or swinging him kicks. Pray, what can he know till all the world know it! If currents in view Are to crystallize too Like things of the past, the winter will show it. The future must rate The fruit of the present: so shrewd men wait, And but of the dead Are their eulogies read.— Good souls, they never will let one rest Until he is borne to the land of the blest! No heart is aglow With the burning zeal of a holiest mission, But makes them fearful of heat below, And tremble in dread of a fiend’s apparition. For Satan has toils that, no matter whether Come evil or good, trap all men together. Whenever one spies Light coming, he cries, “’Tis naught but a will-o-the-wisp to the wise.” Half trust him, and half, not duped by his lies, Begin to dispute them; and then, at the quarrel, The seer of the light has thorns for his laurel.