A scorner shall find nothing but the husks, wherewith to feed his hunger, Come hither, child of meditation, upon whose high fair forehead Hast thou nought to tell us of thine airy joys,— When borne on sinewy pinions, strong as the western condor, The soul, after soaring for a while round the cloud-capped Andes of reflection, Glad in its conscious immortality, leaveth a world behind, To dare at one bold flight the broad Atlantic to another? No dread of thine own energies, still active, day and night, Or vivid horrors, sharp and clear, madden thy tense fibres? Nor waked to work-day life with throbbing head and heart, For the wearied spirit lieth as a fainting maiden, Captive and borne away on the warrior's foam-covered steed, And sinketh down wounded as a gladiator on the sand, While the keen falchion of Intellect is cutting through the scabbard of the brain. Imagination, like a shadowy giant looming on the twilight of the Hartz, Shall overwhelm Judgment with affright, and scare him from his throne: In a dream thou mayst be mad, and feel the fire within thee; In a dream thou mayst travel out of self, and see thee with the eyes of another; Or sleep in thine own corpse; or wake as in many bodies: Or swell, as expanded to infinity; or shrink, as imprisoned to a point; Or among moss-grown ruins may wander with the sullen disembodied, And gaze upon their glassy eyes until thy heart-blood freeze. Alone must thou stand, O man! alone at the bar of judgment; Alone must thou bear thy sentence, alone must thou answer for thy deeds: To feel that thou art accountable separately from thy fellows: How dear to the mind of the sage are the thoughts that are bred in loneliness, For there is as it were music at his heart, and he talketh within him as with friends: But guilt maddeneth the brain, and terror glareth in the eye, Where, in his solitary cell, the malefactor wrestleth with remorse. Give me but a lodge in the wilderness, drop me on an island in the desert, And thought shall yield me happiness, though I may not increase it by imparting: For the soul never slumbereth, but is as the eye of the Eternal, And, mind, the breath of God, knoweth not ideal vacuity : At night, after weariness and watching, the body sinketh into sleep, But the mental eye is awake, and thou reasonest in thy dreams : In a dream thou mayst live a lifetime, and all be forgotten in the morning: Even such is life, and so soon perisheth its memory. OF SPEAKING. SPEECH is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought; Yet oftentimes runneth it to husk, and the grains be withered and scanty. Speech is reason's brother, and a kingly prerogative of mán, That likeneth him to his Maker, who spake, and it was done : Spirit may mingle with spirit, but sense requireth a symbol; And speech is the body of a thought, without which it were not seen. For he that pondereth in silence crowdeth the storehouse of his mind, Uttered out of time, or concealed in its season, good savoureth of evil; And I considered, his openness was hardening them that mocked, Do thou thy good openly, not as though the doing were a crime. For he judgeth,-judgeth he not well?—that nothing need be hid but guilt; Why should thy good be evil spoken of through thine unrighteous silence? The free example of benevolence, unobtruded, yet unbidden, But neither God nor man hath bid thee cloak thy good, When a seasonable word would set thee in thy sphere, that all might see thy brightness. Ascribe the honour to thy Lord, but be thou jealous of that honour, Nor think it light and worthless, because thou mayst not wear it for ⚫ thyself: Remember thy grand prerogative is free unshackled utterance, And suffer not the floodgates of secrecy to lock the full river of thy speech. Come, I will show thee an affliction, unnumbered among this world's sorrows, Yet real, and wearisome, and constant, embittering the cup of life. There be, who can think within themselves, and the fire burneth at their heart, And eloquence waiteth at their lips, yet they speak not with their tongue : Come, I will tell thee of a joy, which the parasites of pleasure have not known, Though earth, and air, and sea, have gorged all the appetites of sense. Behold, what fire is in his eye, what fervour on his cheek! That glorious burst of winged words!—how bound they from his tongue! The full expression of the mighty thought, the strong triumphant argu ment, The rush of native eloquence, resistless as Niagara, The keen demand, the clear reply, the fine poetic image, The nice analogy, the clenching fact, the metaphor bold and free, The grasp of concentrated intellect, wielding the omnipotence of truth, The grandeur of his speech, in his majesty of mind ! Champion of the right, patriot, or priest, or pleader of the innocent cause, Upon whose lips the mystic bee hath droped the honey of persuasion, (21) Whose heart and tongue have been touched, as of old, by the live coal from the altar, How wide the spreading of thy peace, how deep the draught of thy pleasures! To hold the multitude as one, breathing in measured cadence, A thousand hearts kindled by thee with consecrated fire, OF READING. ONE drachma for a good book, and a thousand talents for a true friend :- Yea, were the diamonds of Golconda common as shingles on the shore, To choose the book be mine: the friend let another take. For altered looks and jealousies and fears have none entrance there: |