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Glad in his gladness that comes after thee? Will _his_ strength slay _thy_ worm in Hell? Go to: Cover thy countenance, and watch, and fear. Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die. Outstretched in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: 'Man's measured path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb* until he touched the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destined for.' How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sowed, that thou shouldst reap thereby? Nay, come up hither. From this wave-washed mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the grey line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,-- Still, leagues beyond those leagues there is more sea. *[sic] OLD AND NEW ART I. ST. LUKE THE PAINTER Give honour unto Luke Evangelist; For he it was (the aged legends say) Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray. Scarcely at once she dared to rend the mist Of devious symbols: but soon having wist How sky-breadth and field-silence and this day Are symbols also in some deeper way, She looked through these to God and was God's priest. And if, past noon, her toil began to irk, And she sought talismans, and turned in vain To soulless self-reflections of man's skill, Yet now, in this the twilight, she might still Kneel in the latter grass to pray again, Ere the night cometh and she may not work. II. NOT AS THESE 'I am not as these are,' the poet saith In youth's pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pen, And shut about with his own frozen breath. To others, for whom only rhyme wins faith As poets,--only paint as painters,--then He turns in the cold silence; and again Shrinking, 'I am not as these are,' he saith. And say that this is so, what follows it? For were thine eyes set backwards in thine head, Such words were well; but they see on, and far. Unto the lights of the great Past, new-lit Fair for the Future's track, look thou instead,-- Say thou instead 'I am not as _these_ are.' III. THE HUSBANDMEN Though God, as one that is an householder, Called these to labour in his vine-yard first, Before the husk of darkness was well burst Bidding them grope their way out and be
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