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. 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? Look thou not 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 needst thou with earth's wheel? 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 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 planned! Let age approve of youth, and death complete the same! Even when the words are the same, the delivery changes according to the peculiarities of the hearer. No one tells a story in the same way to different persons. When it is narrated to a little child, greater emphasis is placed on points; we make longer pauses and more salient, definite pictures; but if it is told to an educated man, the thought is sketched more in outline. To one who is ignorant of the circumstances many details are carefully suggested. Even the figures and illustrations are consciously or unconsciously so chosen by one with the dramatic instinct as to adapt the truth to the listener. In "The Englishman in Italy," the story is told to a child. After the quotation, "such trifles," the Englishman speaking would no doubt laugh. The spirit of the poem is shown by the fact that it is spoken by an Englishman to a little child that is an Italian. A monologue shows the effect of character upon character, and hence nearly always implies the direct speaking of one person to another. In this it differs from a speech. Still, the principle applies even to the speaker. He cannot present a subject in the same way to an educated and to an uneducated audience, but instinctively chooses words common to him and to his hearers and finds such illustrations as make his meaning obvious to them. All language is imperfect. Truth is not made clear by being made superficial, but by the careful choosing of words and illustrations understood by the hearer. The speaker, accordingly, must feel his audience. The imperfection of ordinary teaching and speaking is thus explained by a form of dramatic art. Browning says at the close of "The Ring and the Book":