Was I, the world arraigned,

Were they, my soul disdained,

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

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;

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,

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

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.

Ay, 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,

"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past gone, seize to-day!"

Fool! All that is, at all,

Lasts ever, past recall;

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand

sure:

What entered into thee,

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: 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 not thou 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 need'st 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!

AUBREY DE VERE

MAY CAROLS

I

Who feels not, when the Spring once more
Stepping o'er Winter's grave forlorn
With wingéd feet, retreads the shore
Of widowed earth, his bosom burn?

As ordered flower succeeds to flower,
And May the ladder of her sweets
Ascends, advancing hour by hour

From scale to scale, what heart but beats?

Some Presence veiled, in fields and groves,

That mingles rapture with remorse;

Some buried joy beside us moves,

And thrills the soul with such discourse

As they, perchance, that wondering pair
Who to Emmaus bent their way,

Hearing, heard not. Like them our prayer
We make "The night is near us-Stay!"

With Paschal chants the churches ring:
Their echoes strike along the tombs;
The birds their hallelujahs sing;

Each flower with floral incense fumes.

Our long-lost Eden seems restored;
As on we move with tearful eyes
We feel through all the illumined sward
Some upward-working Paradise.

II

Three worlds there are:-the first of SenseThat sensuous earth which round us lies;

The next of Faith's Intelligence:

The third of Glory in the skies.

The first is palpable, but base:

The second heavenly, but obscure;

The third is starlike in the face

But ah! remote that world as pure!

Yet, glancing through our misty clime.
Some sparkles from that loftier sphere