Now ere the sunrise, while the morning star Hung yet behind the pine bough, woke and prayed The world's great shipwright, and his soul was glad Because the Voice was favorable.

Now Began the tap o' the hammer, now ran forth The slaves preparing food.

They therefore ate In peace together; then Niloiya forth Behind the milk-white steers went on her way; And the great Master-builder, down the course Of the long river, on his errand sped, And as he went, he thought: [They do not well Who, walking up a trodden path, all smooth With footsteps of their fellows, and made straight From town to town, will scorn at them that worm Under the covert of God's eldest trees (Such as He planted with His hand, and fed With dew before rain fell, till they stood close And awful; drank the light up as it dropt, And kept the dusk of ages at their roots); They do not well who mock at such, and cry, "We peaceably, without or fault or fear, Proceed, and miss not of our end; but these Are slow and fearful: with uncertain pace, And ever reasoning of the way, they oft, After all reasoning, choose the worser course, And plunged in swamp, or in the matted growth Nigh smothered struggle, all to reach a goal Not worth their pains." Nor do they well whose work Is still to feed and shelter them and theirs, Get gain, and gathered store it, to think scorn Of those who work for a world (no wages paid By a Master hid in light), and sent alone To face a laughing multitude, whose eyes Are full of damaging pity, that forbears To tell the harmless laborer, "Thou art mad."] And as he went, he thought: "They counsel me, Ay, with a kind of reason in their talk, 'Consider; call thy soberer thought to aid; Why to but one man should a message come?
And why, if but to one, to thee?
Art thou Above us, greater, wiser?
Had He sent, He had willed that we should heed.

Then since He knoweth That such as thou, a wise man cannot heed, He did not send.' My answer, 'Great and wise, If He had sent with thunder, and a voice Leaping from heaven, ye must have heard; but so Ye had been robbed of choice, and, like the beasts, Yoked to obedience.

God makes no men slaves,' They tell me, 'God is great above thy thought: He meddles not: and this small world is ours, These many hundred years we govern it; Old Adam, after Eden, saw Him not.' Then I, 'It may be He is gone to knead More clay.