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Ask Learning! I engage You get a prosy wherefore, shall help you to advance In knowledge just as much as helps you Ignorance Surmising, in the mouth of peasant-lad or lass, "I heard my father say he understood it was A building, people built as soon as earth was made Almost, because they might forget (they were afraid) Earth did not make itself, but came of Somebody. They labored that their work might last, and show thereby He stays, while we and earth, and all things come and go. Come whence? Go whither? That, when come and gone, we know Perhaps, but not while earth and all things need our best Attention: we must wait and die to know the rest. Ask, if that 's true, what use in setting up the pile? To make one fear and hope: remind us, all the while We come and go, outside there 's Somebody that stays; A circumstance which ought to make us mind our ways, Because,--whatever end we answer by this life,-- Next time, best chance must be for who, with toil and strife, Manages now to live most like what he was meant Become: since who succeeds so far, 't is evident, Stands foremost on the file; who fails, has less to hope From new promotion. That 's the rule--with even a rope Of mushrooms, like this rope I dangle! those that grew Greatest and roundest, all in life they had to do, Gain a reward, a grace they never dreamed, I think; Since, outside white as milk and inside black as ink, They go to the Great House to make a dainty dish For Don and Donna; while this basket-load, I wish Well off my arm, it breaks,--no starveling of the heap But had his share of dew, his proper length of sleep I' the sunshine: yet, of all, the outcome is--this queer Cribbed quantity of dwarfs which burden basket here Till I reach home; 't is there that, having run their rigs, They end their earthly race, are flung as food for pigs. Any more use I see? Well, you must know, there lies Something, the Curé says, that points to mysteries Above our grasp: a huge stone pillar, once upright, Now laid at length, half-lost--discreetly shunning sight I' the bush and brier, because of stories in the air-- Hints what it signified, and why was stationed there, Once on a time. In vain the Curé tasked his lungs-- Showed, in a preachment, how, at bottom of the rungs O' the ladder, Jacob saw, where heavenly angels stept Up and down, lay a stone which served him, while he slept, For pillow; when he woke, he set the same upright As pillar, and a-top poured oil: things requisite To instruct posterity, there mounts from floor to roof, A staircase, earth to heaven; and also put in proof, When we have sealed the sky, we well may let alone What raised us from the ground, and--paying to the stone Proper respect, of course--take staff and go our way, Leaving the Pagan night for Christian break of day. 'For,' preached he, 'what they dreamed, these Pagans, wide-awake We Christians may behold. How strange, then, were mistake Did anybody style the stone,--because of drop Remaining there from oil which Jacob poured a-top,-- Itself the Gate of Heaven, itself the end, and not The means thereto!' Thus preached the Curé and no jot The more persuaded people but that, what once a thing Meant and had right to mean, it still must mean. So cling Folk somehow to the prime authoritative speech, And so distrust report, it seems as they could reach Far better the arch-word, whereon their fate depends. Through rude charactery, than all the grace it lends, That lettering of your scribes! who flourish pen apace And ornament the text, they say--we say, efface. Hence, when the earth began its life afresh in May, And fruit-trees bloomed, and waves would wanton, and the bay Ruffle its wealth of weed, and stranger-birds arrive, And beasts take each a mate,--folk, too, found sensitive, Surmised the old gray stone upright there, through such tracts Of solitariness and silence, kept the facts Entrusted it, could deal out doctrine, did it please: No fresh and frothy draught, but liquor on the lees, Strong, savage, and sincere: first bleedings from a vine Whereof the product now do Curés so refine To insipidity, that, when heart sinks, we strive And strike from the old stone the old restorative. 'Which is?'--why, go and ask our grandames how they used To dance around it, till the Curé disabused Their ignorance, and bade the parish in a band Lay flat the obtrusive thing that cumbered so the land! And there, accordingly, in bush and brier it--'bides Its time to rise again!' (so somebody derides, That 's pert from Paris,) 'since, yon spire, you keep erect Yonder, and pray beneath, is nothing, I suspect, But just the symbol's self, expressed in slate for rock, Art's smooth for Nature's rough, new chip from the old block!' There, sir, my say is said! Thanks, and Saint Gille increase The wealth bestowed so well!"--wherewith he pockets piece, Doffs cap, and takes the road. I leave in Learning's clutch More money for his book, but scarcely gain as much.