Is to learn from the book of the Lord, to drink from the well of his wisdom. Who can condense the sun, or analyse the fulness of the Bible, So that its ideas be gathered, and the harvest of its wisdom be brought in? To the humble disciple it is bread, but a stone to the proud and unbelieving : A scorner shall find nothing but the husks, wherewith to feed his hunger, Religion taketh by the hand the humble pupil of repentance, 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? In half-shaped visions of sleep hast thou not feared thy flittings, Lest reason, like a raking hawk, return not to thy call; Nor waked to work-day life with throbbing head and heart, Nor welcomed early dawn to save thee from unrest? 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 socn perisheth its memory OF SPEAKING. SPEECH is the golden harvest that followeth the flowering of thought; 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; I have heard the zealous youth telling out his holy secrets Before a swinish throng, who mocked him as he spake; And I considered, his openness was hardening them that mocked, Whereas, a judicious keeping-back might have won their sympathy; 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. 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: There be, whom zeal quickeneth, or slander stirreth to reply, Or need constraineth to ask, or pity sendeth as her messengers, But nervous dread and sensitive shame freeze the current of their speech; |