It’s but little good you’ll do a-watering the last year’s crops.

The proverb-like line uses an agricultural image to argue against futile effort: you cannot improve what is already past, just as watering last year’s crops cannot change their yield. It cautions against dwelling on regrets, trying to repair irreparable outcomes, or investing energy in situations whose season has ended. Implicitly, it urges a shift from backward-looking remorse to forward-looking action—put your labor where it can still bear fruit. In Eliot’s moral universe, such counsel often aligns with practical sympathy and responsibility: acknowledge the past, learn from it, but don’t mistake lamentation or belated exertion for effective moral work in the present.