xiii—Karma
(A)
Who paints a picture, writes a play or book
Which others read while he’s asleep in bed
O’ the other side of the world—when they o’erlook
His page the sleeper might as well be dead;
What knows he of his distant unfelt life?
What knows he of the thoughts his thoughts are raising,
The life his life is giving, or the strife
Concerning him—some cavilling, some praising?
Yet which is most alive, he who’s asleep
Or his quick spirit in some other place,
Or score of other places, that doth keep
Attention fixed and sleep from others chase?
Which is the “he”—the “he” that sleeps, or “he”
That his own “he” can neither feel nor see?
(B)
What is’t to live, if not to pull the strings
Of thought that pull those grosser strings whereby
We pull our limbs to pull material things
Into such shape as in our thoughts doth lie?
Who pulls the strings that pull an agent’s hand,
The action’s counted his, so, we being gone,
The deeds that others do by our command,
Albeit we know them not, are still our own.
He lives who does and he who does still lives,
Whether he wots of his own deeds or no.
Who knows the beating of his heart, that drives
Blood to each part, or how his limbs did grow?
If life be naught but knowing, then each breath
We draw unheeded must be reckon’d death.
(C)
“Men’s work we have,” quoth one, “but we want them—
Them, palpable to touch and clear to view.”
Is it so nothing, then, to have the gem
But we must weep to have the setting too?
Body is a chest wherein the tools abide
With which the craftsman works as best he can
And, as the chest the tools within doth hide,
So doth the body crib and hide the man.
Nay, though great Shakespeare stood in flesh before us,
Should heaven on importunity release him,
Is it so certain that he might not bore us,
So sure but we ourselves might fail to please him?
Who prays to have the moon full soon would pray,
Once it were his, to have it taken away.
