A low name is a thorn in the side, that hindereth the footman in his run
But a name of ancestral renown shall often put the racer to his speed. Few men have grown unto greatness whose names are allied to ridicule, And many would never have been profligate, but for the splendour of a
A wise man scorneth nothing, be it never so small or homely,
For he knoweth not the secret laws that may bind it to great effects.
The world in its boyhood was credulous, and dreaded the vengeance of
The world in its dotage is not wiser, fearing not the influence of small things:
Planets govern not the soul, nor guide the destinies of man,
But trifles, lighter than straws, are levers in the building up of character.
A man hath the tiller in his hand, and may steer against the current,
Or may glide down idly with the stream, till his vessel founder in the whirl-
pool.
WHERE art thou, storehouse of the mind, garner of facts and fancies,—
In what strange firmament are laid the beams of thine airy chambers?
Or art thou that small cavern, (3) the centre of the rolling brain,
Where still one sandy morsel testifieth man's original?
Or hast thou some grand globe, some common hall of intellect,
Some spacious market-place for thought, where all do bring their wares, And gladly rescued from the littleness, the narrow closet of a self,
The privileged soul hath large access,-coming in the livery of learning?
Live we as isolated worlds, perfect in substance and spirit,
Each a sphere, with a special mind, prisoned in its shell of matter?
Or rather, as converging radiations, parts of one majestic whole,
Beams of the Sun, streams from the River, branches of the mighty Tree,
Some bearing fruit, some bearing leaves, and some diseased and barren,~
Some for the feast, some for the floor, and some-how many-for the fire?
Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact,
A momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the now,
An actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash, A life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment.
A brutish man knoweth not this, neither can a fool comprehend it,
But there be secrets of the memory, deep, wondrous, and fearful.
Were I at Petra, could I not declare, My soul hath been here before me?
Am I strange to the columned halls, the calm dead grandeur of Palmyra ?
Know I not thy mount, O Carmel! Have I not voyaged on the Danube?
Nor seen the glare of Arctic snows,-nor the black tents of the Tartar ?
Is it then a dream, that I remember the faces of them of old,
While wandering in the grove with Plato, and listening to Zeno in the
Paul have I seen, and Pythagoras, and the Stagyrite hath spoken me friendly,
And His meek eye looked also upon me, standing with Peter in the palace.
Athens and Rome, Persepolis and Sparta, am I not a freeman of you all?
And chiefly can my yearning heart forget thee, O Jerusalem?
For the strong magic of conception, mingled with the fumes of memory,
Giveth me a life in all past time, yea, and addeth substance to the future.
Be ye my judges, imaginative minds, full-fledged to soar into the sun,
Whose grosser natural thoughts the chemistry of wisdom hath sublimed,
Have ye not confessed to a feeling, a consciousness, strange and vague,
That ye have gone this way before, and walk again your daily life,
Tracking an old routine, and on some foreign strand,
Where bodily ye have never stood, finding your own footsteps?
Hath not at times some recent friend looked out an old familiar,
Some newest circumstance or place teemed as with ancient memories ?
A startling sudden flash lighteth up all for an instant,
And then it is quenched, as in darkness, and leaveth the cold spirit trembling.
Memory is not wisdom; idiots can rote volumes :
Yet, what is wisdom without memory? a babe that is strangled in its birth; The path of the swallow in the air; the path of the dolphin in the waters; A cask running out; a bottomless chasm: such is wisdom without
There be many wise, who cannot store their knowledge;
Yet from themselves are they satisfied, for the fountain is within ·
There be many who store, but have no wisdom of their own,
Lumbering their armory with weapons their muscles cannot lift:
There be many thieves and robbers, who glean and store unlawfully,
Calling in to memory's help some cunningly devised Cabala :
But to feed the mind with fatness, to fill thy granary with corn,
Nor clog with chaff and straw the threshing-floor of reason,
Reap the ideas, and house them well; but leave the words high stubble,
Strive to store up what was thought, despising what was said.
For the mind is a spirit, and drinketh in ideas, as flame melteth into flame, But for words, it must pack them as on floors, cumbrous and perishable merchandise.
To be pained for a minute, to fear for an hour, to hope for a week-how long and weary!
But to remember fourscore years, is to look back upon a day.
An avenue seemeth to lengthen in the eyes of the wayfaring man,
But let him turn, those stationed elms crowd up within a yard;
Pace the lamp-lit streets of some sleeping city,
The multitude of cressets shall seem one, in the false picture of per
Even so, in sweet treachery, dealeth the aged with himself,
He gazeth on the green hill-tops, while the marshes beneath are hidden ;
And the partial telescope of memory pierceth the blank between,
To look with lingering love at the fair star of childhood.
Life is as the current spark on the miner's wheel of flints:
Whiles it spinneth there is light; stop it, all is darkness:
Life is as a morsel of frankincense burning in the hall of Eternity;
It is gone, but its odorous cloud curleth to the lofty roof!
Life is as a lump of salt, melting in the temple-laver;
It is gone,-yet its savour reacheth to the farthest atom ;
Even so, for evil or for good, is life the criterion of a man,
For its memories of sanctity or sin pervade all the firmament of being,
There is but the flitting moment wherein to hope or to enjoy,
But in the calendar of memory, that moment is all time.
I LEFT the happy fields that smile around the village of Content,
And sought with wayward feet the torrid desert of Ambition.
Long time, parched and weary, I travelled that burning sand,
And the hooded basilisk and adder were strewed in my way for palms;
Black scorpions thronged me round, with sharp uplifted stings,
Seeming to mock me as I ran; (then I guessed it was a dream,—
But life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
So I toiled on, doubting in myself, up a steep gravel cliff,
Whose yellow summit shot up far into the brazen sky;
And quickly, I was wafted to the top, as upon unseen wings
Carrying me upward like a leaf: (then I thought it was a dream,——
Yet life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
So I stood on the mountain, and behold! before me a giant pyramid,
And I clomb with eager haste its high and difficult steps;
For, I longed, like another Belus, to mount up, yea to heaven,
Nor sought I rest until my feet had spurned the crest of earth.
Then I sat on my granite throne under the burning sun,
And the world lay smiling beneath me, but I was wrapt in flames;
(And I hoped in glimmering consciousness, that all this torture was a dream,
Yet life is oft so like a dream, we know not where we are.)
And anon, as I sat scorching, the pyramid shuddered to its root,
And I felt the quarried mass leap from its sand foundations :
Awhile it tottered and tilted, as raised by invisible levers,—
(And now my reason spake with me; I knew it was a dream
Yet I hushed that whisper into silence, for I hoped to learn of wisdom,
By tracking up my truant thoughts, whereunto they might lead.)
And suddenly, as rolling upon wheels, adown the cliff it rushed,
And I thought, in my hot brain, of the Muscovites' icy slope;
A thousand yards in a moment we ploughed the sandy seas,
And crushed those happy fields, and that smiling village,
And onward, as a living thing, still rushed my mighty throne,
Thundering along, and pounding, as it went, the millions in my way:
Before me all was life, and joy, and full-blown summer,
Behind me death and woe, the desert and simoom.
Then I wept and shrieked aloud, for pity and for fear;
But might not stop, for, comet-like, flew on the maddened mass
Over the crashing cities, and falling obelisks and towers,
And columns, razed as by a scythe, and high doomes, shivered as an eggshell,
And deep embattled ranks, and women, crowded in the streets,
And children, kneeling as for mercy, and all I had ever loved,
Yea, over all, mine awful throne rushed on with seeming instinct,
And over the crackling forests, and over the rugged beach,
And on with a terrible hiss through the foaming wild Atlantic
That roared around me as I sat, but could not quench my spirit,—
Still on, through startled solitudes we shattered the pavement of the sea,
Down, down, to that central vault, the bolted doors of hell;
And these, with horrid shock, my huge throne battered in,
And on to the deepest deep, where the fierce flames were hottest,
Blazing tenfold as conquering furiously the seas that rushed in with me,— And there I stopped; and a fearful voice shouted in mine ear, "Behold the home of Discontent; behold the rest of Ambition !”
LAW hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter ;
For there are reciprocities of right, which no creature can gainsay.
Unto each there was added by its Maker, in the perfect chain of being,
Dependencies and sustentations, accidents, and qualities, and powers;
And each must fly forward in the curve, unto which it was forced from the
beginning;
Each must attract and repel, or the monarchy of Order is no more.
Laws are essential emanations from the self-poised character of God
And they radiate from that sun, to the circling edges of creation.
Verily, the mighty Lawgiver hath subjected Himself unto laws,
And God is the primal grand example of free unstrained obedience:
His perfection is limited by right, and cannot trespass into wrong,
Because He hath established Himself as the fountain of only good,
And in thus much is bounded, that the evil hath he left unto another,
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