You are the master of this ship?
Captain: I am.
Stranger:
This huddled man belongs to me: a slave
Escaped my service.
Captain:
Lord, I knew not that.
But you are in good time.
Stranger:
And was the slave
For putting out with you? Where are you bound?
Captain:
To India. First he would sail, and then
Again he would not. But, my Lord, I swear
I never guesst he was a runaway.
Stranger:
Well, he shall have his mind and go with you
To India: a good slave he is, but bears
A restless thought. He has slipt off before,
And vexes me still to be watching him.
We'll make a bargain of him.
Captain:
I, my Lord?
I have no need of slaves: I am too poor.
Stranger:
For twenty silver pieces he is yours.
Captain:
That's cheap, if he has skill. Yes, there might be
Profit in him at that. Has he a trade?
Stranger:
He is a carpenter.
Captain:
A carpenter!
Why, for a good one I'ld give all my purse.
Stranger:
No, twenty silver pieces is the price;
Though 'tis a slave a king might joy to own.
I've taught him to imagine palaces
So high, and tower'd so nobly, they might seem
The marvelling of a God-delighted heart
Escaping into ecstasy; he knows,
Moreover, of a stuff so rare it makes
Smaragdus and the dragon-stone despised;
And yet the quarries whereof he is wise
Would yield enough to house the tribes of the world
In palaces of beautiful shining work.
Captain
Lo there! why, that is it: the carpenter
I am to bring is needed for to build
The king's new palace.
Stranger: Yea? He is your man.
Captain:
Come on, my man. I'll put your cunning heels
Where they'll not budge more than a shuffled inch.
My lord, if you'll bide with the rascal here
I'll get the irons ready. Here's your sum.--
Stranger:
Now, Thomas, know thy sin. It was not fear;
Easily may a man crouch down for fear,
And yet rise up on firmer knees, and face
The hailing storm of the world with graver courage.
But prudence, prudence is the deadly sin,
And one that groweth deep into a life,
With hardening roots that clutch about the breast.
For this refuses faith in the unknown powers
Within man's nature; shrewdly bringeth all
Their inspiration of strange eagerness
To a judgment bought by safe experience;
Narrows desire into the scope of thought.
But it is written in the heart of man,
Thou shalt no larger be than thy desire.
Thou must not therefore stoop thy spirit's sight
To pore only within the candle-gleam
Of conscious wit and reasonable brain;
But search into the sacred darkness lying
Outside thy knowledge of thyself, the vast
Measureless fate, full of the power of stars,
The outer noiseless heavens of thy soul.
Keep thy desire closed in the room of light
The labouring fires of thy mind have made,
And thou shalt find the vision of thy spirit
Pitifully dazzled to so shrunk a ken,
There are no spacious puissances about it,
But send desire often forth to scan
The immense night which is thy greater soul;
Knowing the possible, see thou try beyond it
Into impossible things, unlikely ends;
And thou shalt find thy knowledgeable desire
Grow large as all the regions of thy soul,
Whose firmament doth cover the whole of Being,
And of created purpose reach the ends.
* * * * *