That

ye have gone
daily life,

this way before, and walk again your

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 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,

Lumbering their armory with weapons their muscles cannot lift:

There be many thieves and robbers, who glean and store unlawfully,

Calling unto 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 en floors, cumbrous and perishable merchandize.

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 perspective;

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 savor reacheth to the farthest atom: Even so, for evil or for good, is life the criterion of &

man,

For its memories of sanctity or sin prevade all the firmament of being.

There is but the flitting moment, wherein to hope or te

enjoy,

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,

And sought with wayward feet the torrid desert of Am

bition.

Long time, parched and weary, I travelled that burning sand,

And the hooded basilisk and alder 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 whore 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 carth.

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 quarred mass leap from its sand founda

tions:

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 vil

lage,

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 simoon.

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 domes, shivered as an egg-shell,

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!"

Of Subjection.

Law hath dominion over all things, over universal mind and matter;

For there are reciprocitics of right, which no creature can gainsay