He stealeth all goodly names, as worth, and value, and substance, Wealth: He spurneth the needy sage, whose wisdom hath enriched nations, He considereth not that these be the wires which move the puppets of the world. A sentence hath formed a character, (7) and a character subdued a kingdom; A picture hath ruined souls, or raised them to commerce with the skies: Man liveth from hour to hour, and knoweth not what may happen; May by the ductile wire give ease to an ailing child. For outward matter or event, fashion not the character within, Some have said, What is in a name?-most potent plastic influence; And greatest is the power of a name, when its power is least suspected. 2 A low name is a thorn in the side, that hindereth the footman in his run ning; 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 name. 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 stars, 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. OF MEMORY. 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, 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, While wandering in the grove with Plato, and listening to Zeno in the porch? 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. Where bodily ye have never stood, finding your own footsteps? Some newest circumstance or place teemed as with ancient memories? 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 memory. 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, 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 spective; 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; For its memories of sanctity or sin pervade all the firmament of being, But in the calendar of memory, that moment is all time. THE DREAM OF AMBITION. I LEFT the happy fields that smile around the village of Content, 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, |