| |
| IS it the work that makes life great and true? | |
| Or the true soul that, working as it can, | |
| Does faithfully the task it has to do, | |
| And keepeth faith alike with God and man? | |
| |
| Ah! well; the work is something; the same gold | 5 |
| Or brass is fashioned now into a coin, | |
| Now into fairest chalice that shall hold | |
| To panting lips the sacramental wine: | |
| |
| Here the same marble forms a cattle-trough | |
| For brutes by the wayside to quench their thirst, | 10 |
| And there a god emerges from the rough | |
| Unshapely block—yet they were twins at first. | |
| |
| One pool of metal in the melting pot | |
| A sordid, or a sacred thought inspires; | |
| And of twin marbles from the quarry brought | 15 |
| One serves the earth, one glows with altar-fires. | |
| |
| There’s something in high purpose of the soul | |
| To do the highest service to its kind; | |
| There’s something in the art that can unroll | |
| Secrets of beauty shaping in the mind. | 20 |
| |
| Yet he who takes the lower room, and tries | |
| To make his cattle-trough with honest heart, | |
| And could not frame the god with gleaming eyes, | |
| As nobly plays the more ignoble part. | |
| |
| And maybe, as the higher light breaks in | 25 |
| And shows the meaner task he has to do, | |
| He is the greater that he strives to win | |
| Only the praise of being just and true. | |
| |
| For who can do no thing of sovran worth | |
| Which men shall praise, a higher task may find | 30 |
| Plodding his dull round on the common earth, | |
| But conquering envies rising in the mind. | |
| |
| And God works in the little as the great | |
| A perfect work, and glorious over all— | |
| Or in the stars that choir with joy elate, | 35 |
| Or in the lichen spreading on the wall. | |
| |
