Stanza 3 Summary

Lines 5-6

You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic. 

• Hey, you! Yeah, you making… um "haste on the decay," basically you're just wasting your time, but you're all right. The speaker doesn't blame you for being such a hasty participant in the decaying empire because life, no matter what you do, is good. 
• Notice the speaker's use of second person point of view here ("You") that helps to bring the reader right into the poem's message. You're part of the whole messy decay, whether you like it or not.
• Okay, let's slow down here. Why is the speaker blaming us? The basic idea is that all of the rushing about, doing whatever it is you do, is a bit pointless because all of your fussing is just another part of the decaying empire. It's not like that job you have at Starbucks is going to slow down the whole process of decay. It's happening no matter what you do.
• So life can feel really, really long (if you're doing something you hate, for instance) or it can feel suddenly wonderful ("a mortal splendor") if you're doing something that makes you happy and less of a part of the decay. Either way, though, that mold is thickening—sorry, Charlie. (Be sure to check out our "Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay" section for more on all this talk of decay.)
• Line 6 includes the idea of meteors and mountains, both of which are equally important. Destructive meteors might take a mountain down, but then the earth's tectonic plates can build them up again. Case in point: nature has both and things are always getting destroyed and rebuilt again in nature. 
• We can't say we only want mountains or we only want the meteors. We have to accept the fact that we'll always have both the destructive and creative forces in nature. It's just the way the meteor crumbles, folks. 
• Speaking of crumbling, our republic seems to be in trouble too. The underlying message of this metaphor is that empires can't last forever; sooner or later we'll have to accept that the whole thing is going to evolve, or die off completely, and become something else. You just have to go with the flow.
• Notice all of the colons the speaker is using in line 6? That kind of punctuation helps to visually link all of the speaker's clauses together. All of that linking works well with the fact that he's trying to explain these apparently opposite but equal forces that work together in nature. 
• By the very end of line 6, we see the poem's title and that glimmer of hope. Despite all of the decay, the speaker wants America's republic (not empire) to shine on, even though it looks like it's dying. Beneath the mold is a bright shiny republic that the speaker sees as trying really hard to peek through. We still got it, in other words.