Page:Poems that every child should know (ed. Burt, 1904).djvu/356

318 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 enter'd into thee,

That was, is, and shall be:

Time's wheel runs back or stops: Potter and clay endure.

He fix'd 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 impress'd.

What though the earlier grooves

Which ran the laughing loves

Around thy base, no longer pause and press?