Now shall the mangled stump teach proud man a lesson: Now, can we from that elm-tree's sap distil the wine of Truth. Heed ye those hundred rings, concentric from the core, Eddying in various waves to the red bark's shore-like rim? These be the gatherings of yesterdays, present all to-day, This is the tree's judgment, self-history that cannot be gainsaid: Seven years agone there was a drought,--and the seventh ring is narrowed; The fifth from hence was half a deluge,--the fifth is cellular and broad. Thus, Man, thou art a result, the growth of many yesterdays, That stamp thy secret soul with marks of weal or woe: Thou art an almanack of self, the living record of thy deeds; Spirit hath its scars as well as body, sore and aching in their season: Here is a knot,--it was a crime; there is a canker,--selfishness; Lo, here, the heart-wood rotten; lo, there, perchance, the sap-wood sound. Nature teacheth not in vain; thy works are in thee, of thee; Some present evil bent hath grown of older errors: And what if thou be walking now uprightly? Salve not thy wounds with poison, As if a petty goodness of to-day hath blotted out the sin of yesterday: It is well, thou hast life and light; and the Hewer showeth mercy, Dressing the root, pruning the branch, and looking for thy tardy fruits; But, even here as thou standest, cheerful belike and careless, The stains of ancient evil are upon thee, the record of thy wrong is in thee: For, a curse of many yesterdays is thine, many yesterdays of sin, That, haply heeded little now, shall blast thy many morrows. Shall then a man reck nothing, but hurl mad defiance at his Judge, Knowing that less than an Omnipotent cannot make the has been, not been? He ought,--so Satan spake; he must,--so Atheism urgeth; He may,--it was the libertine's thought; he doth,--the bad world said it. But thou of humbler heart, thou student wiser for simplicity, While Nature warneth thee betimes, heed the loving counsel of Religion. True, this change is good, and penitence most precious; But trust not thou thy change, nor rest upon repentance: For all we are corrupted at the core, smooth as surface seemeth; What health can bloom in a beautiful skin, when rottenness hath fed upon the bones? And guilt is parcel of us all; not thou, sweet nursling of affection, Art spotless, though so passing fair,--nor thou, mild patriarch of virtue.