II.
Here a grain of sand beside the first playing leap-frog over another;
tumbling over and tumbled over. It carves a path declining.
One small step the size of a grain. One giant leap its entire breadth,
stepping its breadth again and again. Stepping its breadth again.
So quickly has it traversed itself a hundred times over
and just as quickly hardly travelled at all.
Determination is unmoved like a rock, with all the genuine effort
applied to turn a rough edge over; the sharpened edge
of a tumbling rock broken again and again as it beats the road
it submits to, only to cast off smaller stones as the edge is smoothed,
and these smaller stones beat their rough edges in turn tumbling
and being tumbled.
From these stones are cast smaller stones, and from these
are cast smaller stones. And from these smaller stones
are cast smaller stones. And so these edges are themselves smoothed
by casting edges until the broad chiseled face is a smoothed fine grit,
still as abrasive as the first.
Ah but a respite! Let us rest. The wind is dead. No; passed on.
A time to revel for all accomplishments. How fine to reduce
one great edge to innumerable dusts and sweep them aside.
