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?
Hast thou no secret pangs to whisper common men,
No dread of thine own energies, still active, day and night,
Lest too ecstatic heat sublime thyself away,

Or vivid horrors, sharp and clear, madden thy tense fibres? In half-shaped visions of sleep hast thou not feared thy flit tings,

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 judg

ment;

Alone must thou bear thy sentence, alone must thou answer for thy deeds:

Therefore it is well thou retirest often to secresy and solitude,

To feel that thou art accountable separately from thy fellows: For a crowd hideth truth from the eyes, society drowneth

thought,

And, being but one among many, stifleth the chidings of conscience.

Solitude bringeth woe to the wicked, for his crimes are told out in his ear;

But addeth peace to the good, for the mercies of his God are numbered.

Thou mayst know if it be well with a man,-loveth he gaiety or solitude?

For the troubled river rusheth to the sea, but the calm lake

slumbereth among the mountains.

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 Eter

nal,

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 mayest live a life-time, 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 man, 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.

When thou walkest, musing with thyself, in the green aisles of the forest,

Utter thy thinkings aloud, that they take a shape and being; For he that pondereth in silence crowdeth the storehouse of his mind,

And though he hath heaped great riches, yet is he hindered in the using.

A man that speaketh too little, and thinketh much and deeply,

Corrodeth his own heart-strings, and keepeth back good from his fellows:

A man that speaketh too much, and museth but little and

lightly,

Wasteth his mind in words, and is counted a fool among

men;

But thou, when thou hast thought, weave charily the web of meditation,

And clothe the ideal spirit in the suitable garments of speech.

UTTERED out of time, or concealed in its season, good savoreth of evil;

To be secret looketh like guilt, to speak out may breed contention:

Often have I known the honest heart, flaming with indignant

virtue,

Provoke unneeded war by its rash ambassador the tongue : Often have I seen the charitable man go so slily on his mis

sion,

That those who met him in the twilight, took him for a skulking thief:

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;

I have judged rashly and hardly the hand liberal in the dark, Because in the broad daylight it hath holden it a virtue to be

close;

And the silent tongue have I condemned, because reserve hath chained it,

That it hid, yea from a brother, the kindness it had done by comforting.

No need to sound a trumpet, but less to hush a footfall:
Do thou thy good openly, not as though the doing were a

crime.

Secresy goeth cowled, and Honesty demandeth wherefore? For he ji dgeth,-judgeth he not well ?-that nothing need be hid but guilt;

Why should thy good be evil spoken of through thine unrighteous silence;

If thou art challenged, speak, and prove the good thou doest.
The free example of benevolence, unobtruded, yet unhidden,
Soundeth in the ears of sloth, Go, and do thou likewise :
And I wot the hypocrite's sin to be of darker dye,

Because the good man, fearing, thereby hideth his light:
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 honor to thy Lord, but be thou jealous of that

honor,

Nor think it light and worthless, because thou mayst not wear it for thyself:

Remember thy grand prerogative is free unshackled utter

ance,

And suffer not the floodgates of secresy to lock the full tiver 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 messen

gers,

But nervous dread and sensitive shame freeze the current of their speech;

The mouth is sealed as with lead, a cold weight presseth on the heart,

The mocking promise of power is once more broken in performance,

And they stand impotent of words, travailing with unborn thoughts:

Courage is cowed at the portal: wisdom is widowed of utter

ance;

He that went to comfort is pitied; he that should rebuke, is

silent.

And fools who might listen and learn, stand by to look and

laugh;

While friends, with kinder eyes, wound deeper by compas