He tests the body and the mind,
He rings them o’er and o’er;
And if they crack, He throws them back,
And fashions them once more.
8.
He chokes the infant throat with slime,
He sets the ferment free;
He builds the tiny tube of lime
That blocks the artery.
9.
He lets the youthful dreamer store
Great projects in his brain,
Until he drops the fungus spore
That smears them out again.
10.
He stores the milk that feeds the babe,
He dulls the tortured nerve;
He gives a hundred joys of sense
Where few or none might serve.
11.
And still he trains the branch of good
Where the high blossoms be,
And wieldeth still the shears of ill
To prune and prune His tree.
12.