What is this? that a seed produced a seed, and so for a thousand seasons. Ascend a thousand steps, thy ladder leaveth thee in air:
Thou canst not climb to God, and short of Him is nothing;
There is no cause for aught we see, but in his present will.
Begin from the Maker, thou carriest down his attributes to reptiles,
The sharded beetle and the lizard live and move in Him:
Begin from the creature, corruption and infirmity mar thy foolish toil:
Heap Ossa on Olympus,—how much art thou nearer to the stars?
It is easy running from a mountain's top down to the valleys at its foot,
But difficult and steep the laborious ascent, and feebly shalt thou reach it;
Yet man, beginning from himself, that first deluding mystery,
Hopeth from the pit of lies to struggle up to truth;
So, taxing knowledge to its strength, he pusheth one step further,
And fancieth complacently that much is done by reaching a remote effect
Then he maketh answer to himself, as a silly nurse to her little one,
Evading, in a mist of words, hard things he cannot solve;
Till, like an ostrich in the desert, he burieth his head in atoms,
Hoping that, if he is blind, no sun can shine in heaven.
Therefore cometh it to pass, that an atheist is ever the most credulous,
Snatching at any foolish cause, that may dispel his doubts;
And, even as it were for ridicule, a spectacle to men and angels,
The captious and cautious unbeliever is of all men weakest to believe :
Cut from the anchorage of God, his bark is a plaything of the billows;
T'he compass of his principle is broken, the rudder of his faith unshipped:
Chance and Fate, in a stultified antagonism, govern all for him;
Truth sprang
from the conflict of falsities, and the multitude of accidents
hath bred design!
Where is the imposture so gross that shall not entrap his curiosity?
What superstition is so abject that it doth not blanch his cheek?
Whereof can he be sure, with whom Chaos is substitute for Order?
How should his silly structure stand, a pyramid built upon its apex?
Yea, I have seen gray-headed men, the bastard slips of science,
Go for light to glowworms, while they scorn the sun at noon;
Men, who fear no God, trembling at a gipsy's curse,
Men, who jest at a revelation, clinging to a madman's prophecy!
There is a pleasing dread in the fashion of all mysteries,
For hope is mixed therein and fear; who shall divine their issue?
Even the orphan, wandering by night, lost on dreary moors,
Is sensible of some vague bliss amidst his shapeless terrors;
The buoyancy of instant expectation, spurring on the mind to venture
Overbeareth, in its energy, the cramp and the chill of apprehension.
There is a solitary pride, when the heart, in new importance,
Writeth gladly on its archives, the secrets none other men have seen:
And there is a caged terror, evermore wrestling with the mind,
When crime hath whispered his confession, and the secrets are written there in blood:
The village maiden is elated at a tenderly confided tale;
The bandit's wife with sickening fear guessed the premeditated murder;
The sage, with triumph on his brow, hideth his deep discovery;
The idlest clown shall delve all day to find a hidden treasure.
For mystery is man's life; we wake to the whisperings of novelty:
And what, though we lie down disappointed? we sleep, to wake in hope.
The letter, or the news, the chances and the changes, matters that may
happen,
Sweeten or embitter daily life with the honey-gall of mystery.
For we walk blindfold,—and a minute may be much,-a step may reach
What earthly loss, what heavenly gain, may not this day produce?
Levelled of Alps and Andes, without its valleys and ravines,
How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and sublimity:
And so, shorn of mystery, beggared in its hopes and fears,
How flat the prospect of existence, mapped by intuitive foreknowledge?
Praise God, creature of earth, for the mercies linked with secrecy,
That spices of uncertainty enrich thy cup of life:
'raise God, his hosts on high, for the mysteries that make all joy; What were intelligence, with nothing more to learn, or heaven, in eternity of sameness?
To number every mystery were to sum the sum of all things:
None can exhaust a theme, whereof God is example and similitude. Nevertheless, take a garland from the garden, a handful from the harvest, Some scattered drops of spray from the ceaseless mighty cataract. Whence are we,-whither do we tend,-how do we feel and reason? How strange a thing is man, a spirit saturating clay!
When doth soul make embryos immortal,—how do they rank hereafter,— And will the unconscious idiot be quenched in death as nothing?
In essence immaterial, are these minds, as it were thinking machines ?
For, to understand may but rightly be to use a mechanism all possess,
So that in reading or hearing of another, a man shall seem unto himself
To be recollecting images or arguments, native and congenial to his mind:
And yet, what shall we say,—who can aread the riddle ?
The brain may be clockwork, and mind its spring, mechanism quickened by a spirit.
Who so shrewd as rightly to divide life, instinct, reason;
Trees, zoophytes, creatures of the plain, and savage man among them?
Hath the mimosa instinct, or the scallop more than life,—
Or the dog less than reason,—or the brute man more than instinct ?
What is the cause of health,—and the gendering of disease?
Why should arsenic kill,—and whence is the potency of antidotes?
Behold, a morsel,—eat and die; the term of thy probation is expired:
Behold, a potion-drink and be alive; the limit of thy trial is enlarged.
Who can expound beauty? or explain the character of nations?
Who will furnish a cause for the epidemic force of fashion?
Is there a moral magnetism living in the light of example ?
Is practice electricity?—Yet all these are but names.
Doth normal Art imprison, in its works, spirit translated into substance,
So that the statue, the picture, or the poem, are crystals of the mind?
And doth Philosophy with sublimating skill shred away the matter,
Till rarefied intelligence exudeth even out of stocks and stones ?
O mysteries, ye all are one, the mind of an inexplicable Architect
Dwelleth alike in each, quickening and moving in them all.
Fields, and forests, and cities of men, their woes, and wealth, and works,
And customs, and contrivances of life, with all we see and know,
For a little way, a little while, ye hang dependent on each other,
But all are held in one right hand, and by His will ye are.
Here is answer unto mystery, an unintelligible God,
This is the end and the beginning, it is reason that He be not understood.
Therefore it were probable and just, even to a man's weak thinking,
To have one for God who always may be learnt, yet never fully known:
That He, from whom all mysteries spring, in whom they all converge,
Throned in his sublimity beyond the grovellings of lower intellect,
Should claim to be truer than man's truest, the boasted certainty of numbers,
Should baffle his arithmetic, confound his demonstrations, and paralyze the
might of his necessity,
Standing supreme as the mystery of mysteries, every where, yet im
Essential one in three, essential three in one!
I HAD a seeming friend;-I gave him gifts, and he was gone;
I had an open enemy;-I gave him gifts, and won him ;
Common friendship standeth on equalities, and cannot bear a debt;
But the very heart of hate melteth at a good man's love:
Go to, then, thou that sayest,-I will give and rivet the links:
For pride shall kick at obligation, and push the giver from him.
The covetous spirit may rejoice, revelling in thy largess,
But chilling selfishness will mutter,-I must give again:
The vain heart may be glad, in this new proof of man's esteem,
But the same idolatry of self abhorreth thoughts of thanking.
Nevertheless, give; for it shall be a discriminative test,
Separating honesty from falsehood, weeding insincerity from friendship
Give, it is like God; thou weariest the bad with benefits:
Give, it is like God; thou gladdenest the good by gratitude.
Give to thy near of kin, for Providence hath stationed thee his helper:
Yet see that he claim not as his right, thy freewill offering of duty.
Give to the young, they love it; neither hath the poison of suspicion
Spoilt the flavour of their thanks, to look for latent motives.
Give to merit, largely give; his conscious heart will bless thee:
It is not flattery, but love,-the sympathy of men his brethren.
Give, for encouragement in good; the weak desponding mind
Hath many foes, and much to do, and leaneth on its friends.
Yet heed thou wisely these; give seldom to thy better;
For such obtrusive boon shall savour of presumption;
Or, if his courteous bearing greet thy proffered kindness,
Shall not thine independent honesty be vexed at the semblance of a bribe?
Moreover, heed thou this; give to thine equal charily,
The occasion fair and fitting, the gift well chosen and desired:
Hath he been prosperous and blest? a flower may show thy gladness;
Is he in need? with liberal love, tender him the well-filled purse:
Disease shall welcome friendly care in grapes and precious unguents;
And where a darling child hath died, give praise, and hope, and sympathy,
Yet once more, heed thou this; give to the poor discreetly,
Nor suffer idle sloth to lean upon thy charitable arm :
To diligence give, as to an equal, on just and fit occasion;
Or he bartereth his hard-earned self-reliance for the casual lottery of gifts; The timely loan hath added nerve, where easy liberality would palsy; Work and wages make a light heart: but the mendicant asketh with a
A man's own self respect is worth unto him more than money,
And evil is the charity that humbleth, and maketh man less happy.
There are who sow liberalities, to reap the like again;
But men accept his boon, scorning the shallow usurer;
I have known many such a fisherman lose his golden baits;
And oftentimes the tame decoy escapeth with the flock.
Yea, there are who give unto the poor, to gain large interest of God :
Fool,-to think His wealth is money, and not mind:
And haply after thine alms, thy calculated givings,
The hurricane shall blast thy crops, and sink the homeward snip;
Then shall thy worldly soul murmur that the balances were false,
Thy trader's mind shall think of God,-He stood not to his bargain!
Give, saith the preacher, be large in liberality, yield to the holy impulse,
Tarry not for cold consideration, but cheerfully and freely scatter;
So, for complacency of conscience, in a gush of counterfeited charity,
He that hath not wherewith to be just, selfishly presumeth to be generous;
The debtor, and the rich by wrong, are known among the band of the be
nevolent;
And men extol the noble hearts, who rob that they may give.
Receivers are but little prone to challenge rights of giving,
Nor stop to test, for conscience-sake, the righteousness of mammon:
And the zealot in a cause is a receiver, at the hand which bettereth his
And thus an unsuspected bribe shall blind the good man's judgment :
It is easy to excuse greatness, and the rich are readily forgiven:
What, if his gains were evil, sanctified by using them aright.?
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