Other bright days of action have seemed great: Wild days in a pampero off the Plate; Good swimming days, at Hog Back or the Coves Which the young gannet and the corbie loves; Surf-swimming between rollers, catching breath Between the advancing grave and breaking death, Then shooting up into the sunbright smooth To watch the advancing roller bare her tooth, And days of labour also, loading, hauling; Long days at winch or capstan, heaving, pawling; The days with oxen, dragging stone from blasting, And dusty days in mills, and hot days masting. Trucking on dust-dry deckings smooth like ice, And hunts in mighty wool-racks after mice; Mornings with buckwheat when the fields did blanch With White Leghorns come from the chicken ranch. Days near the spring upon the sunburnt hill, Plying the maul or gripping tight the drill. Delights of work most real, delights that change The headache life of towns to rapture strange Not known by townsmen, nor imagined; health That puts new glory upon mental wealth And makes the poor man rich. But that ends, too, Health with its thoughts of life; and that bright view, That sunny landscape from life’s peak, that glory, And all a glad man’s comments on life’s story, And thoughts of marvellous towns and living men, And what pens tell and all beyond the pen, End, and are summed in words so truly dead, They raise no image of the heart and head, The life, the man alive, the friend we knew, The mind ours argued with or listened to, None; but are dead, and all life’s keenness, all, Is dead as print before the funeral, Even deader after, when the dates are sought, And cold minds disagree with what we thought. This many-pictured world of many passions Wears out the nations as a woman fashions, And what life is is much to very few, Men being so strange, so mad, and what men do So good to watch or share; but when men count Those hours of life that were a bursting fount, Sparkling the dusty heart with living springs, There seems a world, beyond our earthly things, Gated by golden moments, each bright time Opening to show the city white like lime, High-towered and many-peopled. This made sure, Work that obscures those moments seems impure, Making our not-returning time of breath Dull with the ritual and records of death, That frost of fact by which our wisdom gives Correctly stated death to all that lives. Best trust the happy moments. What they gave Makes man less fearful of the certain grave, And gives his work compassion and new eyes, The days that make us happy make us wise. SHIPS