But I need, now as then,

So passed in making up the main ac

count:

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, would 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 aglow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?

Setebos, Setebos, and Setebos! "Thinketh, He dwelleth i'the cold o' the

moon.

"Thinketh He made it, with the sun to match,

But not the stars; the stars came otherwise ;

Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that:

Also this isle, what lives and grows thereon,

And snaky sea which rounds and ends the same.

"Thinketh, it came of being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold,

Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish

That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived,

And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine

O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid,

A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave;

Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun,)

Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe,

And in her old bounds buried her despair, Hating and loving warmth alike: so He.

Made all we see, and us, in spite : how else?

He could not, Himself, make a second self

To be His mate; as well have made Himself:

He would not make what He mislikes or slights,

An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:

But did, in envy, listlessness or sport, Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be

Weaker in most points, stronger in a few, Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,

Things He admires and mocks too,--that is it.

Because, so brave, so better though they be,

It nothing skills if He begin to plague. Look now, I melt a gourd-fruit into mash, Add honeycomb and pods, I have perceived,

Which bite like finches when they bill and kiss,

Then, when froth rises bladdery, drink up all,

Quick, quick, till maggots scamper through my brain;

Last, throw me on my back i' the seeded thyme,

And wanton, wishing I were born a bird. Put case, unable to be what I wish,

I yet could make a live bird out of clay : Would not I take clay, pinch my Caliban Able to fly?-for, there, see, he hath wings,

And great comb like the hoopoe's to admire,

And there, a sting to do his foes offence. There, and I will that he begin to live. Fly to yon rock-top, nip me off the horns Of grigs high up that make the merry din Saucy through their veined wings, and mind me not.

In which feat, if his leg snapped, brittle clay,

And he lay stupid-like.-why I should laugh;

And if he, spying me should fall to weep Beseech me to be good, repair his wrong. Bid his poor leg smart less or grow

again.

Well, as the chance were this might

I make the cry my maker cannot make With his great round mouth; he must blow through mine!

Would not I smash it with my foot? So He.

But wherefore rough, why cold and ill at ease?

Aha, that is a question! Ask, for that, What knows,-the something over Sete

bos

That made Him, or He, may be, found and fought,

Worsted, drove off and did to nothing, perchance.

There may be something quiet o'er His head,

Out of His reach, that feels nor joy nor

grief,

Since both derive from weakness in some way.

I joy because the quails come; would not joy

Could I bring quails here when I have a 'mind:

This Quiet, all it hath a mind to, doth. 'Esteemeth stars the outposts of its couch,

But never spends much thought nor care that way.

It may look up, work up, the worse for those

It works on! 'Careth but for Setebos
The many-handed as a cuttle-fish,
Who, making Himself feared through
what He does,

Looks up, first, and perceives he cannot

soar

To what is quiet and hath happy life; Next looks down here, and out of very spite

Makes this a bauble-world to ape yon real,

These good things to match those as hips do grapes.

'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.

Himself peeped late, eyed Prosper at his books

Careless and lofty, lord now of the isle : Vexed, 'stitched a book of broad leaves, arrow-shaped,

Wrote thereon, he knows what, prodigious words:

Has peeled a wand and called it by a

name;

Weareth at whiles for an enchanter's

robe

The eyed skin of a supple oncelot ;

"Tasteth himself, no finer good i' the

world

When all goes right, in this safe summertime,

And he wants little, hungers, aches not much,

Than trying what to do with wit and strength.

'Falls to make something: 'piled yon pile of turfs,

And squared and stuck there squares of soft white chalk,

And, with a fish-tooth, scratched a moon on each,

And set up end wise certain spikes of tree,

And crowned the whole with a sloth's skull a-top.

Found dead i' the woods, too hard for one to kill.

No use at all i' the work, for work's sole sake;

'Shall some day knock it down again: so He.