Be there, for once and all, Severed great minds from small, Announced to each his station in the Past! Was I, the world arraigned, Were they, my soul disdained, 125 Right? Let age speak the truth and give us peace at last! Now, who shall arbitrate? Ten men love what I hate, Shun what I follow, slight what I receive; Ten, who in ears and eyes 130 Match me: we all surmise, They this thing and I that; whom shall my soul believe? Not on the vulgar mass Called "work," must sentence pass, Things done, that took the eye and had the price; 135 O'er which, from level stand, The low world laid its hand, Found straightway to its mind, could value in a trice: But all, the world's coarse thumb And finger failed to plumb, 140 So passed in making up the main account; All instincts immature, All purposes unsure, That weighed not as his work, yet swelled the man's amount; Thoughts hardly to be packed 145 Into a narrow act, Fancies that broke through language and escaped; All I could never be, All, men ignored in me, This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the pitcher shaped. 150 Aye, note that Potter's wheel, That metaphor! and feel Why time spins fast, why passive lies our clay Thou, to whom fools propound, When the wine makes its round, 155 "Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize today!" Fool! All that is, at all, Lasts ever, past recall; Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure: What entered into thee, 160 _That_ was, is, and shall be: Time's wheel runs back or stops; Potter and clay endure. He fixed thee, mid this dance Of plastic circumstance, This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest: 165 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 170 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?