And worsted in the unequal fight, strengtheneth the hands of error: And to the listening ear will urge the false argument of feeling. So hath it often been, that, judging by results, The hottest friends of truth have done her deadliest wrong. Alas! for there are enemies without, glad enough to parley with a traitor, Zeal without judgment is an evil, though it be zeal unto good: These thy wounded hands were smitten in the house of friends :— To point out a meaning in her words, he will blot those words with his finger; And winnow chaff into the eyes, before he hath wheat to show: He will heap sturdy logs on a faint expiring fire, And with a room in flames, will cast the casement open; By a shoulder to the wheel downhill harasseth the labouring beast, And where obstruction were needed, will harm by an ill-judged thrusting-on. A vessel foundereth at sea, if a storm have unshipped the rudder; And a mind with much sail shall require heavy ballast. Take a lever by the middle, thou shalt seem to prove it powerless, Argue for truth indiscreetly, thou shalt toil for falsehood. There is plenty of room for a peaceable man in the most thronged assembly; Many a teacher, lacking judgment, hindereth his own lessons; The garment woven of a piece is rashly torn by schism, Discretion guide thee on thy way, noble-minded youth, Help thee to humour infirmities, to wink at innocent errors, To take small count of forms, to bear with prejudice and fancy: Teach thee that well-timed silence hath more eloquence than speech, The snows of Hecla lie around its troubled smoking Geysers; Let the cool streams of prudence temper the hot spring of zeal : OF TRIFLES. YET Once more, saith the fool, yet once, and is it not a little one? And he blindeth his conscience with lies, and stupefieth his heart with doubts; Whom shall I harm in this matter? and a little ill breedeth much good; My thoughts, are they not mine own? and they leave no mark behind them ; And if God so pardoneth crime, how should these petty sins affect him?— So he transgresseth yet again, and falleth by little and little, Till the ground crumble beneath him, and he sinketh in the gulf despairing. For there is nothing in the earth so small that it may not produce great things, And no swerving from a right line, that may not lead eternally astray. A landmark tree was once a seed, and the dust in the balance maketh a difference; And the cairn is heaped high by each one flinging a pebble: The dangerous bar in the harbour's mouth is only grains of sand; And the shoal that hath wrecked a navy is the work of a colony of worms: And the living rock is worn by the diligent flow of the brook. What, is thy servant a dog ?-not yet wilt thou grasp the dagger, And then conceive it possible, and then reflect on it as done, And use, by little and little, thyself to regard thyself a villain, Not long will crime be absent from the voice that doth invoke him to try heart, And bitterly wilt thou grieve, that the buds have ripened into poison. A spark is a molecule of matter, yet it may kindle the world; Vast is the mighty ocean, but drops have made it vast. Despise not thou a small thing, either for evil or for good; For a look may work thy ruin, or a word create thy wealth: The walking this way or that, the casual stopping or hastening, Hath saved life, and destroyed it, hath cast down and built up fortunes. Commit thy trifles unto God, for to him is nothing trivial ; And it is but the littleness of man that seeth no greatness in a trifle. All things are infinite in parts, and the moral is as the material, Neither is any thing vast, but it is compacted of atoms. Thou art wise, and shalt find comfort, if thou study thy pleasure in trifles, For slender joys, often repeated, fall as sunshine on the heart: Thou art wise, if thou beat off petty troubles, nor suffer their stinging to fret thee: Thrust not thine hand among the thorns, but with a leathern glove. Regard nothing lightly which the wisdom of Providence hath ordered; And therefore, consider all things that happen unto thee or unto others. The warrior that stood against a host, may be pierced unto death by a needle; And the saint that feareth not the fire, may perish the victim of a thought. And the cable of a furlong is lost through an ill-wrought inch. .s it not also His doing, when an aphis creepeth on a rose-bud?— If an avalanche roll from its Alp, ye tremble at the will of Providence; Is not that will concerned when the sear leaves fall from the poplar ?— A thing is great or little only to a mortal's thinking, But abstracted from the body, all things are alike important: The Ancient of Days noteth in his book the idle converse of a creature And happy and wise is the man to whose thought existeth not a trifle. OF RECREATION. To join advantage to amusement, to gather profit with pleasure, Is the wise man's necessary aim, when he lieth in the shade of recre ation, For he cannot fling aside his mind, nor bar up the floodgates of his wisdom isfaction. The soul may not safely dwell too long with the deep things of futurity; The mind may not always be bent back, like the Parthian, straining at the past: (16) And, if thou art wearied with wrestling on the broad arena of science, Leave awhile thy friendly foe, half vanquished in the dust, Refresh thy jaded limbs, return with vigour to the strife,— Thou shalt easier find thyself his master, for the vacant interval of leisure. That which may profit and amuse is gathered from the volume of creation, For every chapter therein teemeth with the playfulness of wisdom. And Learning delighteth to discover the affinity of seeming opposites : moor, The cayman, basking on a mud-bank, and the walrus anchored to an iceberg, The dog at his master's feet, and the milk-kine lowing in the meadow; To learn a use in the beetle, and more than a beauty in the butterfly; Each distant shining world, a kingdom for one of the redeemed; To read the antique history of earth, stamped upon those medals in the rocks Which Design hath rescued from decay, to tell of the green infancy f time; To gather from the unconsidered shingle mottled star-like agates, Full of unstoried flowers in the bubbling bloom-chalcedony : Or gay and curious shells, fretted with microscopic carving, Corallines, and fresh seaweeds, spreading forth their delicate branches It is an admirable lore, to learn the cause in the change, To study the chemistry of Nature, her grand, but simple secrets. To note her kind compensations, her unobtrusive excellence. In all it is wise happiness to see the well-ordained laws of Jehovah, The harmony that filleth all his mind, the justice that tempereth his bounty, The wonderful all-prevalent analogy that testifieth one Creator, The broad arrow of the Great King, carved on all the stores of his arsena.. But beware, O worshipper of God, thou forget not him in his dealings, |