UGLINESS is native unto nothing, but possible abstract evil:
In every thing created, at its worst, lurk the dregs of loveliness.
We be fallen into utter depths, yet once we stood sublime,
For man was made in perfect praise, his Maker's comely image:
And so his new-born ill is spiced with older good,

He carrieth with him, yea, to crime, the withered limbs of beauty. Passions may be crooked generosities; the robber stealeth for his children;

Murder was avenger of the innocent, or wiped out shame with blood.

Many virtues, weighted by excess, sink among the vices;
Many vices, amicably buoyed, float among the virtues.
For albeit sin is hate, a foul and bitter turpitude,

As hurling back against the Giver all his gifts with insult,
Still, when concrete in the sinner, it will seem to partake of his at-
tractions,

And in seductive masquerade shall cloak its leprous skin;

His broken lights of beauty shall illume its utter black,

And those refracted rays glitter on the hunch of its deformity.

VERILY the fancy may be false, yet hath it met me in my musings, (As expounding the pleasantness of pleasure, but no ways extenuating license,)

That even those yearnings after beauty, in wayward, wanton youth, When, guileless of ulterior end, it craveth but to look upon the

lovely,

Seem like struggles of the soul, dimly remembering preëxistence, And feeling in its blindness for a long-lost god, to satisfy its long

ing;

As if the sucking babe, tenderly mindful of his mother,

Should pull a dragon's dugs, and drain the teats of poison.

Our primal source was beauty, and we pant for it ever and again; But sin hath stopped the way with thorns; we turn aside, wander, and are lost.

GOD, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty,
And every child of reason drew his essence from that stem.
Therefore it is of intuition, an innate hankering for home,
A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed,
That we, unconscious of a cause, should bask these darkened souls
In some poor relics of the light that blazed in primal beauty,

And, even like as exiles of idolatry, should quaff from the cisterns of creation

Stagnant draughts, for those fresh springs that rise in the Creator.

ONLY, being burdened with the body, spiritual appetite is warped, And sensual man, with taste corrupted, drinketh of pollutions: Impulse is left, but indiscriminate; his hunger feasteth upon carrion; His natural love of beauty doteth over beauty in decay.

He still thirsteth for the beautiful; but his delicate ideal hath grown gross,

And the very sense of thirst hath been fevered from affection into passion.

He remembereth the blessedness of light, but it is with an old

man's memory,

A blind old man from infancy, that once hath seen the sun,

Whom long experience of night hath darkened in his cradle recol

lections,

Until his brightest thought of noon is but a shade of black.

THIS, then, is thy charm, beauty, all pervading;
And this thy wondrous strength, O beauty, conqueror of all;
The outline of our shadowy best, the pure and comely creature,
That winneth on the conscience with a saddening admiration;
And some untutored thirst for God, the root of every pleasure,
Native to creatures, yea, in ruin, and dating from the birthday of the
soul.

For God sealeth up the sum, confirmed exemplar of proportions,
Rich in love, full of wisdom, and perfect in the plenitude of
Beauty. (37)

16

OF FAME.

BLOW the trumpet, spread the wing, fling thy scroll upon the sky, Rouse the slumbering world, O Fame, and fill the sphere with echo: -Beneath thy blast they wake, and murmurs come hoarsely on the

wind,

And flashing eyes and bristling hands proclaim they hear thy mes

sage;

Rolling and surging as a sea, that upturned flood of faces

Hasteneth with its million tongues to spread the wondrous tale;
The hum of added voices groweth to the roaring of a cataract,
And rapidly from wave to wave is tossed that exaggerated story,
Until those stunning clamors, gradually diluted in the distance,
Sink ashamed, and shrink afraid of noise, and die away.
Then brooding Silence, forth from his hollow caverns,

Cloaked and cowled, and gliding along, a cold and stealthy shadow,
Once more is mingled with the multitude, whispering as he walketh,
And hushing all their eager ears to hear some newer Fame.

So all is still again; but nothing of the past hath been forgotten;
A stirring recollection of the trumpet ringeth in the hearts of men:
And each one, either envious or admiring, hath wished the chance
were his,

To fill as thus the startled world with fame, or fear, or wonder.
This lit thy torch of sacrilege, Ephesian Eratostratus; (38)
This dug thy living grave, Pythagoras, the traveller from Hades;
For this dived Empedocles into Ætna's fiery whirlpool;

For this conquerors, regicides, and rebels, have dared their perilous crimes.

In all men, from the monarch to the menial, lurketh lust of fame; The savage and the sage alike regard their labors proudly:

Yea, in death, the glazing eye is illumined by the hope of reputation, And the stricken warrior is glad, that his wounds are salved with

glory.

FOR fame is a sweet self-homage, an offering grateful to the idol, A spiritual nectar for the spiritual thirst, a mental food for mind,

A pregnant evidence to all of an after immaterial existence,
A proof that soul is scathless, when its dwelling is dissolved.
And the manifold pleasures of fame are sought by the guilty and
the good;

Pleasures, various in kind, and spiced to every palate;

The thoughtful loveth fame as an earnest of better immortality,
The industrious and deserving as a symbol of just appreciation,
The selfish as a promise of advancement, at least to a man's own
kin,

And common minds as a flattering fact that men have been told of their existence.

THERE is a blameless love of fame, springing from desire of justice,
When a man hath featly won and fairly claimed his honors:
And then fame cometh as encouragement to the inward conscious-
ness of merit,

Gladdening by the kindliness and thanks wherewithal his labors are rewarded.

But there is a sordid imitation, a feverish thirst for notoriety,

Waiting upon vanity and sloth, and utterly regardless of deserving; And then fame cometh as a curse; the fire damp is gathered in the mine;

The soul is swelled with poisonous air, and a spark of temptation shall explode it.

IDLE causes, noised awhile, shall yield most active consequents,
And therefore it were ill upon occasion to scorn the voice of rumor.
Ye have seen the chemist in his art mingle invisible gases;
And lo, the product is a substance, a heavy, dark precipitate;
Even so fame, hurtling on the quiet with many meeting tongues,
Can out of nothing bring forth fruits, and blossom on a nourish-
ment of air.

For many have earned honor, and thereby rank and riches,

From false and fleeting tales, some casual, mere mistake;

And many have been wrecked upon disgrace, and have struggled with poverty and scorn,

From envious hints and ill reports, the slanders cast on innocence. Whom may not scandal hit? those shafts are shot at a venture; Who standeth not in danger of suspicion? that net hath caught the noblest.

Cæsar's wife was spotless, but a martyr to false fame; (39)

And Rumor, in temporary things, is gigantic as a ruin or a remedy: Many poor and many rich have testified its popular omnipotence, And many a panic-stricken army have perished with the host of the Assyrians.

NEVERTHELESS, if opportunity be nought, let a man bide his time; So the matter be not merchandise nor conquest, fear thou less for character.

If a liar accuseth thee of evil, be not swift to answer;

Yea, rather give him license for a while; it shall help thine honor afterward:

Never yet was calumny engendered, but good men speedily discerned it,

And innocence hath burst from its injustice, as the green world rolling out of Chaos.

What though still the wicked scoff, this also turneth to his praise; Did ye never hear that censure of the bad is buttress to a good man's

glory?

What if the ignorant still hold out, obstinate in unkind judg

Ignorance and calumny are paired; we affirm by two negations;
Let them stand round about, pushing at the column in a circle,
For all their toil and wasted strength, the foolish do but prop it.
And note thou this; in the secret of their hearts, they feel the
taunt is false,

And cannot help but reverence the courage that walketh amid calumnies unanswering;

He standeth as a gallant chief, unheeding shot or shell;

He trusted in God his Judge; neither arrows nor the pestilence shall harm him.

A HIGH heart is a sacrifice to Heaven; should it stoop among the creepers in the dust,

To tell them that what God approved is worthy of their praise? Never shall it heed the thought; but flaming on in triumph to the

skies,

And quite forgetting fame, shall find it added as a trophy.

A great mind is an altar on a hill; should the priest descend from his altitude

To canvass offerings and worship from dwellers on the plain?