We stealeth all goodly names, as worth, and value, and substance. Wealth: He spurneth the needy sage, whose wisdom hath enriched nations, And the sons of poverty and learning, without whom earth were a dese.. Music, the soother of cares, the tuner of the dank discordant heart-strings, It is nought unto such an one but sounds, whereby some earn their living: The poem, and the picture, and the statue, to him seem idle baubles, Which wealth condescendeth to favour, to gain him the name of patron. But little wotteth he the might of the means his folly despiseth; 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; As thou directest the power, harm or advantage will follow; May by the ductile wire give ease to an ailing child. For outward matter or event, fashion not the character within, But each man, yielding or resisting, fashioneth his mind for himself. 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. ne 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: la eta govern not the soul, nor guide the destinies of man, Bu tes, 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,— 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-descrtion, 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 Athens and Rome, Persepolis and Sparta, am I not a freeman of you all! And chiefly can my yearning heart forget thee, O Jerusalem ? For the strong magic of conception, mingled with the fumes of memory, 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 tremb ling. 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, Reap the ideas, and house then well; but leave the words high stubble, 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; THE DREAM OF AMBITION. I LEFT the happy fields that smile around the village of Content, And the hooded basilisk and adder were strewed in my way for palms; So I stood on the mountain, and behold! before me a giant pyramid, 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, |