REUBEN
Each mite o’ dust its work. Take any plan:
There’s ne’er a single separate thing in it
But’s there to help the others: must be there,
To help the rest bring out the whole thing right.
Not for a sitting softly, but for use:
That’s sense—the standing-ways they must stay fixt,
The sliding-ways must travel and not stop,
The cradle must keep faithful to the keel—
Ay, and the ropes to check her, an’ the blocks
Needed to steady as she makes her plunge
The vessel that’s to tread mid-ocean, must
Break—but they all help! . . .
“Ah, that helps me out!
Old, broken, mazed, or young and strong and sure,
We’re just like that. What are we in the end,
What are we meant for, what’s the good of us,
But each to eke out everybody else,
An’ all to do His work? So, then, for me,
I must be wanted, else I’d be put out . . .
A kind o’ block, perhaps, that’s being broke. . . .
Well, an’ if that’s my business, turn it round!
If good to others must mean ill to me.
That ill to me is others’ good, and God’s.
My breaking is their making—I’m of use!
“An’ whether it’s all just, how can I judge,
Lord God? Or care to, neither. For it’s Thou!
Ay, it all lies in that. It is Thyself
44
