"Once I said, 'Content will wait on work, though work appear Unfruitful.' Now I say, 'Where is the good? What is the good? A lamp when it is lit Must needs give light; but I am like a man Holding his lamp in some deserted place Where no foot passeth. Must I trim my lamp, And ever painfully toil to keep it bright, When use for it is none? I must; I will. Though God withhold my wages, I must work, And watch the bringing of my work to nought,-- Weed in the vineyard through the heat o' the day, And, overtasked, behold the weedy place Grow ranker yet in spite of me. "Oh! yet My meditated words are trodden down Like a little wayside grass. Castaway shells, Lifted and tossed aside by a plunging wave, Have no more force against it than have I Against the sweeping, weltering wave of life, That, lifting and dislodging me, drives on, And notes not mine endeavor." Afterward, He added more words like to these; to wit, That it was hard to see the world so sad: He would that it were happier. It was hard To see the blameless overborne; and hard To know that God, who loves the world, should yet Let it lie down in sorrow, when a smile From him would make it laugh and sing,--a word From him transform it to a heaven. He said, Moreover, "When will this be done? My life Hath not yet reached the noon, and I am tired; And oh! it may be that, uncomforted By foolish hope of doing good and vain Conceit of being useful, I may live, And it may be my duty to go on Working for years and years, for years and years."