The last of life, for which the first was made: Our times are in His hand Who saith, "A whole I planned, Youth shows but half; trust God; see all, nor be afraid!" Rejoice we are allied To That which doth provide And not partake, effect and not receive! A spark disturbs our clod; Nearer we hold of God Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe. RABBI BEN EZRA. 97 Then, welcome each rebuff That turns earth's smoothness rough, Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand, but go! Be our joys three-parts pain! Strive, and hold cheap the strain; Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe! For thence, a paradox Which comforts while it mocks, Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail; What I aspired to be And was not, comforts me: A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale. Not once beat "Praise be Thine! I see the whole design, I, who saw Power, see now Love perfect too; Perfect I call my plan : Thanks that I was a man! Maker, remake, complete,-I trust what Thou shalt do!" H 98 RABBI BEN EZRA, 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. RABBI BEN EZRA. 99 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 midst this dance Of plastic circumstance, This present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest; Machinery just meant To give thy soul its bent, Try then and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed. 100 RABBI BEN EZRA. What though the earlier grooves Which ran the laughing loves Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? What though, about thy rim, Scull-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 aglow! 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 colours rife, Bound dizzily,-mistake my end, to slake Thy thirst: |