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The brutal and besotted, the savage and the slave, the sucking infant
and the idiot,
The mass of mean and common minds, and all to be immortal?—
Consider every beginning, how small it is and feeble:
Ganges, and the rolling Mississippi sprung of brooks among the
mountains;
The Yew-tree of a thousand years was once a little seed,
And Nero's marble Rome, a shepherd's mud-built hovel:
A speck is on the tropic sky, and it groweth to the terrible tornado;
An apple, all too fair to see, destroyed a world of souls:
A tender babe is born,—it is Attila, scourge of the nations!
A seeming malefactor dieth,—it is Jesus, the Saviour of men!

And hive not in thy thoughts the vain and wordy notion
That nothing which was born in Time can tire out the footsteps of
Infinity:
Reckon up a sum in numbers; where shall progression stop?
The starting-post is definite and fixed, but what is the goal of
numeration?
So, begin upon a moment, and when shall being end?
Souls emanate from God, to travel with Him equally for ever.
Moreover, thou that objectest the unenterable circle of eternity,
That none but He from everlasting can endure, as to a future
everlasting,
Consider, may it be impossible that creatures were counted in their
Maker,
And so, that the confines of Eternity are filled by God alone?
Trust not thy soul upon a fancy: who would freight a bubble with a
diamond,
And launch that priceless gem on the boiling rapids of a cataract?

If then we perish not at death, but walk in spirit through the

darkness,
Waiting for a mansion incorruptible, whereof this body is the seed,
Tell me, when shall be the period? time and its ordeals are done:
The storms are passed, the night is at end, behold the Sabbath
morning.
Is death to be conqueror again, and claim once more the victory,—
Can the enemy's corpse awaken into life, and bruise the Champion's
head?
Evil, terrible ensample, that foil to the attributes of Good,
Is banished to its own black world, weeded out of earth and heaven:
Shall that great gulf be passed, and sin be sown again?—
We know but this, the book of truth proclaimeth gladly, Never!

There remaineth the will of our God: when He repenteth of His

creature,
Made by self-suggested mercy, ransomed by self-sacrificing justice,—
When Truth, that swore unto his neighbour, disappointeth him, and
cleaveth to a lie,—
When the counsels of Wisdom are confounded, and Love warreth
with itself,—
When the Unchangeable is changed, and the arm of Omnipotence is
broken,—
Then,—thy quenchless soul shall have reached the goal of its
existence.

But it seemeth to thy notions of the merciful and just, a false and
fearful thing,
To lay such a burden upon time, that eternity be built on its
foundation:
As if so casual good or ill should colour all the future,
And the vanity of accident, or sternness of necessity, save or wreck a
soul.
Were it casual, vain, or stern, this might pass for truth:
But all things are marshalled by Design, and carefully tended by
Benevolence.
O man, thy Judge is righteous,—noting, remembering, and weighing;
—
Want, ignorance, diversities of state, are cast into the balance of
advantage:
The poisonous example of a parent asketh for allowance in the child;
Care, diseases, toils, and frailties,—all things are considered.
And again, a mysterious Omniscience knoweth the spirits that are
His,
While the delicate tissues of Event are woven by the fingers of
Ubiquity.
Should Providence be taken by surprise from the possible impinging
of an accident,
One fortuitous grain might dislocate the banded universe:
The merest seeming trifle is ordered as the morning light;
And He, that rideth on the hurricane, is pilot of the bubble on the
breaker.

Once more, consider Matter, how small a thing is father to the

greatest;
Thou that lightly hast regarded the results of so-called accident.
A blade of grass took fire in the sun,—and the prairies are burnt to
the horizon:
A grain of sand may blind the eye, and madden the brain to murder:
A careful fly deposited its egg in the swelling bud of an acorn,—
The sapling grew,—cankrous and gnarled,—it is yonder hollow oak:
A child touched a spring, and the spring closed a valve, and the
labouring engine burst,—
A thousand lives were in that ship,—wrecked by an infant's finger!
Shall nature preach in vain? thy casualty, guided in its orbit,
Though less than a mote upon the sunbeam, saileth in a fleet of
worlds;
That trivial cause, watered and observed of the Husbandman day by
day,—
In calm undeviating strength doth work its large effect.
Thus, in the pettiness of life note thou seeds of grandeur,
And watch the hour-glass of Time with the eyes of an heir of
Immortality.

There still be clouds of witnesses,—if thou art not weary of my

speech,—
Flocks of thoughts adding lustre to the light, and pointing on to Life.
For reflect how Truth and Goodness, well and wisely put,
Commend themselves to every mind with wondrous intuition:
What is this? the recognition of a standard, unwritten, natural,
uniform;
Telling of one common source, the root of Good and True.
And if thus present soul can trace descent from Deity,
Being, as it standeth, individual, a separate reasonable thing,
What should hinder that its hope may not trace gladly forward,
And, in astounding parallel, like Enoch walk with God?
Yea, the genealogy of soul, that vivifying breath of a Creator,
Breath, no transient air, but essence, energy, and reason,
Is looming on the past, and shadowing the future, sublimely as
Melchisedek of old,
Having not beginning, nor end of days, but present in the majesty of
Peace!

O false scholar, credulous in vanities, and only sceptical of truth,

Wherefore toil to cheat thy soul of its birthright, Immortality?
Is it for thy guilt? He pardoneth: Is it for thy frailty? He will help:
Though thou fearest, He is love; and Mercy shall be deeper than
Despair:
Even for thy full-blown pride, is it much to be receiver of a God?
And lo, thy rights, He made thee; thy claims, He hath redeemed.
Hath the fair aspect of affection no beauty that thou shouldst desire
it?
And are those sorrows nothing, to thee that passest by?
For it is Fact, immutable, that God hath dwelt in Man:
With gentle generous love ennobling while He bought us.
What, though thou art false, ignorant, weak and daring,—
Can the sun be quenched in heaven—or only Belisarius be blind?

But, even stooping to thy folly, grant all these hopes are vain;
Stultify reason, wrestle against conscience, and wither up the heart:
Where is thy vast advantage?—I have all that thou hast,
The buoyancy of life as strong, and term of days no shorter;
My cup is full with gladness, my griefs are not more galling:
And thus, we walk together, even to the gates of death:
There, (if not also on my journey, blessing every step,
Gladdening with light, and quickening with love, and killing all my
cares,)
There,—while thou art quailing, or sullenly expecting to be nothing,—
There,—is found my gain; I triumph, where thou tremblest.
Grant all my solace is a lie, yet it is a fountain of delight,
A spice in every pleasure, and a balm for every pain:
O precious wise delusion, scattering both misery and sin,—
O vile and silly truth, depraving while it curseth!

Darkling child of knowledge, commune with Socrates and Cicero,

They had no prejudice of birth, no dull parental warpings;
See, those lustrous minds anticipate the dawning day,—
Whilst thou, poor mole, art burrowing back to darkness from the
light.
I will not urge a revelation, mercies, miracles, and martyrs,
But, after twice a thousand years, go, learn thou of the pagan:
It were happier and wiser even among fools, to cling to the shadow
of a hope,
Than, in the company of sages, to win the substance of despair;
But here, the sages hope; despair is with the fools,
The base bad hearts, the stolid heads, the sensual and the selfish.

And wilt thou, sorry scorner, mock the phrase, despair?

Despair for those who die and live,—for me, I live and die:
What have I to do with dread?—my taper must go out;—
I nurse no silly hopes, and therefore feel no fears:
I am hastening to an end.—O false and feeble answer:
For hope is in thee still, and fear, a racking deep anxiety.
Erring brother, listen: and take thine answer from the ancients:
Consider every end, that it is but the end of a beginning.
All things work in circles; weariness induceth unto rest,
Rest invigorateth labour, and labour causeth weariness:
War produceth peace, and peace is wanton unto war:
Light dieth into darkness, and night dawneth into day:
The rotting jungle reeds scatter fertility around;
The buffalo's dead carcase hath quickened life in millions:
The end of toil is gain, the end of gain is pleasure,
Pleasure tendeth unto waste, and waste commandeth toil.

So, is death an end,—but it breedeth an infinite beginning;

Limits are for time, and death killed time: Eternity's beginning is for
ever.
Ambition, hath it any goal indeed? is not all fruition, disappointment?
A step upon the ladder, and another, and another,—we start from
every end?
Look to the eras of mortality, babe, student, man,
The husband, the father, the death-bed of a saint,—and is it then an
end?
That common climax, Death, shall it lead to nothing?
How strong a root of causes flowering a consequence of vapour:
That solid chain of facts, is it to be snapped for ever?
How stout a show of figures, weakly summing to nonentity.

Or haply, Death, in the doublings of thy thought, shall seem

continuous ending;
A dull eternal slumber, not an end abrupt.
O most futile chrysalis, wherefore dost thou sleep?
Dreamless, unconscious, never to awake,—what object in such
slumber?
If thou art still to live, it may as well be wakefully as sleeping:
How grovelling must that spirit be, to need eternal sleep!
Or was indeed the toil of life so heavy and so long,
That nevermore can rest refresh thine overburdened soul?—
Sleep is a recreance to body, but when was mind asleep?
Even in a swoon it dreameth, though all be forgotten afterward:
The muscles seek relaxing, and the irritable nerves ask peace;
But life is a constant force, spirit an unquietable impetus:
The eye may wear out as a telescope, and the brain work slow as a
machine,
But soul unwearied, and for ever, is capable of effort unimpaired.

I live, move, am conscious: what shall bar my being?

Where is the rude hand, to rend this tissue of existence?
Not thine, shadowy Death, what art thou but a phantom?
Not thine, foul Corruption, what art thou but a fear?
For death is merely absent life, as darkness absent light;
Not even a suspension, for the life hath sailed away, steering gladly
somewhere.
And corruption, closely noted, is but a dissolving of the parts,
The parts remain, and nothing lost, to build a better whole.
Moreover, mind is unity, however versatile and rapid;
Thou canst not entertain two coincident ideas, although they quickly
follow:
And Unity hath no parts, so that there is nothing to dissolve:
An element is still unchanged in every searching solvent.
Who then shall bid me be annulled,—He that gave me being?
Amen, if God so will; I know that will is love:
But love hath promised life, and therefore I shall live;
So long as He is God, I shall be His Creature!

And here, shrewd reasoner, so eager to prove that thou must perish,
I note a sneer upon thy lip, and ridicule is haply on thy tongue:
How, said he,—creature of a God, and are not all His creatures,—
The lion, and the gnat,—yea, the mushroom, and the crystal,—have
all these a soul?
Thy fancies tend to prove too much, and overshoot the mark:
If I die not with brutes, then brutes must live with me?—
I dare not tell thee that they will, for the word is not in my
commission;
But of the twain it is the likelier; continuance is the chance:
Men, dying in their sins, are likened unto beasts that perish;
They are dark, animal, insensate, but have they not a lurking soul?
The spirit of a man goeth upward, reasonable, apprehending God;
The spirit of a beast goeth downward, sensual, doting on the
creature:
Who told thee they die at dissolution?—boldly think it out,—
The multitude of flies, and the multitude of herbs, the world with all
its beings:
Is Infinity too narrow, Omnipotence too weak, and Love so anxious
to destroy,
Doth Wisdom change its plan, and a Maker cancel His created?
God's will may compass all things, to fashion and to nullify at
pleasure:
Yet are there many thoughts of hope, that all which are shall live.
True, there is no conscience in the brute, beyond some educated
habit,
They lay them down without a fear, and wake without a hope:
Hunger and pain is of the animal: but when did they reckon or
compare?
They live, idealess, in instinct; and while they breathe they gain:
The master is an idol to his dog, who cannot rise beyond him;
And void of capability for God, there would seem small cause for an
infinity.
Therefore, caviller, my poor thoughts dare not grant they live:
But is it not a great thing to assume their annihilation—and thine
own?
Would it be much if a speck on space, this globe with all its millions,
Verily, after its pollution, were suffered to exist in purity?
Or much, if guiltless creatures, that were cruelly entreated upon
earth,
Found some commensurate reward in lower joys hereafter?
Or much, if a Creator, prodigal of life, and filled with the profundity of
love,
Rejoice in all creatures of His skill, and lead them to perfection in
their kind?
O man, there are many marvels; yet life is more a mystery than
death:
For death may be some stagnant life,—but life is present God!

Many are the lurking-holes of evil; who shall search them out?
Who so skilled to cut away the cancer with its fibres?
For wily minds with sinuous ease escape from lie to lie;
And cowards driven from the trench steal back to hide again.
Vain were the battle, if a warrior, having slain his foes,
Shall turn and find them vital still, unharmed, yea, unashamed:
For Error, dark magician, daily cast out killed,
Quickeneth animate anew beneath the midnight moon:
Once and again, once and again, hath reason answered wisely;
But not the less with brazen front doth folly urge her questions.
It were but unprofitable toil, a stand-up fight with unbelief:
When was there candour in a caviller, and who can satisfy the
faithless?
Too long, O truant from the fold, have I tracked thy devious paths;
Too long, treacherous deserter, fought thee as a noble foeman:
Haply, my small art, and an arm too weakly for its weapon,
Hath failed to pierce thine iron coat, and reach thy stricken soul:
Haply, the fervour of my speech, and too patient sifting of thy
fancies,
Shall tend to make thee prize them more, as worthier and wiser:
Go to: be mine the gain: we measure swords no more;
Go,—and a word go with thee,—Man, thou ART Immortal!

Child of light, and student in the truth, too long have I forgotten
thee:
Lo, after parley with an alien, let me hold sweet converse with a
brother.
Glorious hopes and ineffable imaginings, crowd our holy theme,
Fear hath been slaughtered on the portal, and Doubt driven back to
darkness:
For Christ hath died, and we in Him; by faith His All is ours;
Cross and crown, and love, and life; and we shall reign in Him!
Yea, there is a fitness and a beauty in ascribing immortality to mind,
That its energies and lofty aspirations may have scope for indefinite
expansion.
To learn all things is privilege of reason, and that with a growing
capability,
But in this age of toil and time we scarce attain to alphabets:
How hardly in the midst of our hurry, and jostled by the cares of life,
Shall a man turn and stop to consider mighty secrets;
With barely hours, and barely powers, to fill up daily duties,
How small the glimpse of knowledge his wondering eye can catch!
And knowledge is a noting of the order wherein God's attributes
evolve,
Therefore worthy of the creature, worthy of an angel's seeking;
Yea, and human knowledge, meagre though the harvest,
Hath its roots, both deep and strong; but the plants are exotic to the
climate;
All we seem to know demand a longer learning,
History and science, and prophecy and art, are workings all of God:
And there are galaxies of globes, millions of unimagined beings,
Other senses, wondrous sounds, and thoughts of thrilling fire,
Powers of strange might, quickening unknown elements,
And attributes and energies of God which man may never guess.

Not in vain, O brother, hath soul the spurs of enterprize,

Nor aimlessly panteth for adventure, waiting at the cave of mystery:
Not in vain the cup of curiosity, sweet and richly spiced,
Is ruby to the sight, and ambrosia to the taste, and redolent with all
fragrance:
Thou shalt drink, and deeply, filling the mind with marvels;
Thou shalt watch no more, lingering, disappointed of thy hope;
Thou shalt roam where road is none, a traveller untrammelled,
Speeding at a wish, emancipate, to where the stars are suns!

Count, count your hopes, heirs of immortality and love;

And hear my kindred faith, and turn again to bless me.
For lo, my trust is strong to dwell in many worlds,
And cull of many brethren there, sweet knowledge ever new:
I yearn for realms where fancy shall be filled, and the ecstasies of
freedom shall be felt,
And the soul reign gloriously, risen to its royal destinies:
I look to recognize again, through the beautiful mask of their
perfection,
The dear familiar faces I have somewhile loved on earth:
I long to talk with grateful tongue of storms and perils past,
And praise the mighty Pilot that hath steered us through the rapids:
He shall be the focus of it all, the very heart of gladness,—
My soul is athirst for God, the God who dwelt in Man!
Prophet, priest, and king, the sacrifice, the substitute, the Saviour,
Rapture of the blessed in the hunted One of earth, the Pardoner in
the victim;
How many centuries of joy concentrate in that theme,
How often a Methusalem might count his thousand years, and leave
it unexhausted!
And lo, the heavenly Jerusalem, with all its gates one pearl,
That pearl of countless price, the door by which we entered,—
Come, tread the golden streets, and join that glorious throng,
The happy ones of heaven and earth, ten thousand times ten
thousand;
Hark, they sing that song,—and cast their crowns before Him;
Their souls alight with love,—Glory, and Praise, and Immortality!—
Veil thine eyes: no son of time may see that holy vision,
And even the seraph at thy side hath covered his face with wings.

Doth he not speak parables?—each one goeth on his way,

Ye that hear, and I that counsel, go on our ways forgetful.
For the terrible realities whereto we tend, are hidden from our eyes,
We know, but heed them not, and walk as if the temporal were all
things.
Vanities, buzzing on the ear, fill its drowsy chambers,
Slow to dread those coming fears, the thunder and the trumpet;
Motes, steaming on the sight, dim our purblind eyes,
Dark to see the ponderous orb of nearing Immortality:
Hemmed in by hostile foes, the trifler is busied on an epigram;
The dull ox, driven to slaughter, careth but for pasture by the way.
Alas, that the precious things of truth, and the everlasting hills,
The mighty hopes we spake of, and the consciousness we feel,—
Alas, that all the future, and its adamantine facts,
Clouded by the present with intoxicating fumes,—
Should seem even to us, the great expectant heirs,
To us, the responsible and free, fearful sons of reason,
Only as a lovely song, sweet sounds of solemn music,
A pleasant voice, and nothing more,—doth he not speak parables?

Look to thy soul, O man, for none can be surety for his brother:
Behold, for heaven—or for hell,—thou canst not escape from
Immortality!

OF IDEAS.
IND is like a volatile essence, flitting hither and thither,
A solitary sentinel of the fortress body, to show himself
everywhere by turns:
Mind is indivisible and instant, with neither parts nor
organs,
That it doeth, it doth quickly, but the whole mind doth it:
An active versatile agent, untiring in the principle of
energy,
Nor space, nor time, nor rest, nor toil, can affect the
tenant of the brain;
His dwelling may verily be shattered, and the furniture thereof be
disarranged,
But the particle of Deity in man slumbereth not, neither can be
wearied:
However swift to change, even as the field of a kaleidoscope,
It taketh in but one idea at once, moulded for the moment to its
likeness:
Mind is as the quicksilver, which, poured from vessel to vessel,
Instantly seizeth on a shape, and as instantly again discardeth it;
For it is an apprehensive power, closing on the properties of Matter,
Expanding to enwrap a world, collapsing to prison up an atom:
As, by night, thine irritable eyes may have seen strange changing
figures,
Now a wheel, now suddenly a point, a line, a curve, a zigzag,
A maze ever altering, as the dance of gnats upon a sunbeam,
Swift, intricate, neither to be prophesied, nor to be remembered in
succession,
So, the mind of a man, single, and perpetually moving,
Flickereth about from thought to thought, changed with each idea;
For the passing second metamorphosed to the image of that within
its ken,
And throwing its immediate perceptions into each cause of
contemplation.
It shall regard a tree; and unconsciously, in separate review,
Embrace its colour, shape, and use, whole and individual
conceptions;
It shall read or hear of crime, and cast itself into the commission;
It shall note a generous deed, and glow for a moment as the doer;
It shall imagine pride or pleasure, treading on the edges of
temptation;
Or heed of God and of His Christ, and grow transformed to glory.

Therefore, it is wise and well to guide the mind aright,

That its aptness may be sensitive to good, and shrink with antipathy
from evil:
For use will mould and mark it, or nonusage dull and blunt it;—
So to talk of spirit by analogy with substance;
And analogy is a truer guide, than many teachers tell of,
Similitudes are scattered round, to help us, not to hurt us;
Moses, in his every type, and the Greater than Moses, in His
parables,
Preach, in terms that all may learn, the philosophic lessons of
analogy:
And here, in a topic immaterial, the likeness of analogy is just;
By habits, knit the nerves of mind, and train the gladiator shrewdly:
For thought shall strengthen thinking, and imagery speed
imagination,
Until thy spiritual inmate shall have swelled to the giant of Otranto.

Nevertheless, heed well, that this Athlete, growing in thy brain,

Be a wholesome Genius, not a cursed Afrite:
And see thou discipline his strength, and point his aim discreetly;
Feed him on humility and holy things, weaned from covetous desires;
Hour by hour and day by day, ply him with ideas of excellence,
Dragging forth the evil but to loathe, as a Spartan's drunken Helot:
And win, by gradual allurements, the still expanding soul,
To rise from a contemplated universe, even to the Hand that made it.

A common mind perceiveth not beyond his eyes and ears:

The palings of the park of sense enthral this captured roebuck:
And still, though fettered in the flesh, he doth not feel his chains,
Externals are the world to him, and circumstance his atmosphere.
Therefore tangible pleasures are enough for the animal man;
He is swift to speak and slow to think, dreading his own dim
conscience;
And solitude is terrible, and exile worse than death,
He cannot dwell apart, nor breathe at a distance from the crowd.
But minds of nobler stamp, and chiefest the mint-marked of heaven,
Walk independent, by themselves, freely manumitted of externals:
They carry viands with them, and need no refreshment by the way,
Nor drink of other wells than their own inner fountain.
Strange shall it seem how little such a man will lean upon the
accidents of life,
He is winged and needeth not a staff; if it break, he shall not fall:
And lightly perchance doth he remember the stale trivialities around
him,
He liveth in the realm of thought, beyond the world of things;
These are but transient Matter, and himself enduring Spirit:
And worldliness will laugh to scorn that sublimated wisdom.
His eyes may open on a prison-cell, but the bare walls glow with
imagery;
His ears may be filled with execration, but are listening to the music
of sweet thoughts;
He may dwell in a hovel with a hero's heart, and canopy his penury
with peace,
For mind is a kingdom to the man, who gathereth his pleasure from
Ideas.

OF NAMES.
ADAM gave the name, when the Lord had made His creature,
For God led them in review, to see what man would call them.
As they struck his senses, he proclaimed their sounds,
A name for the distinguishing of each, a numeral by which it should
be known:
He specified the partridge by her cry, and the forest prowler by his
roaring,
The tree by its use, and the flower by its beauty, and everything
according to its truth.

There is an arbitrary name; whereunto the idea attacheth;

And there is a reasonable name, linking its fitness to idea:
Yet shall these twain run in parallel courses,
Neither shall thou readily discern the habit from the nature.
For mind is apt and quick to wed ideas and names together,
Nor stoppeth its perception to be curious of priorities;
And there is but little in the sound, as some have vainly fancied,
The same tone in different tongues shall be suitable to opposite
ideas:
Yea, take an ensample in thine own; consider similar words:
How various and contrary the thoughts those kindred names
produce:
A house shall seem a fitting word to call a roomy dwelling,
Yet there is a like propriety in the small smooth sound, a mouse:
Mountain, as if of a necessity, is a word both mighty and majestic,—
What heed ye then of Fountain?—flowing silver in the sun.

Many a fair flower is burdened with preposterous appellatives,

Which the wiser simplicity of rustics entitled by its beauties;
And often the conceit of science, loving to be thought cosmopolite,
Shall mingle names of every clime, alike obscure to each.
There is wisdom in calling a thing fitly; name should note particulars
Through a character obvious to all men, and worthy of their instant
acceptation.
The herbalist had a simple cause for every word upon his catalogue,
But now the mouth of Botany is filled with empty sound;
And many a peasant hath an answer on his tongue, concerning some
vexed flower,
Shrewder than the centipede phrase, wherewithal philosophers invest
it.

For that, the foolishness of pride, and flatteries of cringing homage,

Strew with chaff the threshing-floors of science; names perplex them
all:
The entomologist, who hath pried upon an insect, straightway shall
endow it with his name;
It had many qualities and marks of note,—but in chief, a vain
observer:
The geographer shall journey to the pole, through biting frost and
desolation,
And, for some simple patron's sake, shall name that land, the happy:
The fossilist hath found a bone, the rib of some huge lizard,
And forthwith standeth to it sponsor, to tack himself on reptile
immortalities:
The sportsman, hunting at the Cape, found some strange-horned
antelope,
The spots are new, the fame is cheap, and so his name is added.
Thus, obscurities encumber knowledge, even by the vanity of men
Who play into each other's hand the game of giving names.

Various are the names of men, and drawn from different wells;
Aspects of body, or characters of mind, the creature's first idea:
And some have sprung of trades, and some of dignities or office;
Other some added to a father's, and yet more growing from a place:
Animal creation, with sciences, and things,—their composites, and
near associations,
Contributed their symbollings of old, wherewith to title men:
And heraldry set upon its cresture the figured attributes as ensigns
By which, as by a name concrete, its bearer should be known.

Egypt opened on the theme, dressing up her gods in qualities;

Horns of power, feathers of the swift, mitres of catholic dominion,
The sovereign asp, the circle everlasting, the crook and thong of
justice,
By many mystic shapes and sounds displayed the idol's name.
Thereafter, high-plumed warriors, the chieftains of Etruria and Troy,
And Xerxes, urging on his millions to the tomb of pride, Thermopylæ,
And Hiero with his bounding ships, all figured at the prow,
And Rome's Prætorian standards, piled with strange devices,
And stout crusaders pressing to the battle, clad in sable mail;
These all in their speaking symbols, earned, or wore, a name.
Eve; the mother of all living, and Abraham, father of a multitude,
Jacob, the supplanter, and David, the beloved, and all the worthies of
old time,
Noah, who came for consolation, and Benoni, son of sorrow,
Kings and prophets, children of the East, owned each his title of
significance.

There be names of high descent, and thereby storied honours;

Names of fair renown, and therein characters of merit:
But to lend the lowborn noble names, is to shed upon them ridicule
and evil;
Yea, many weeds run rank in pride, if men have dubbed them
cedars.
And to herald common mediocrity with the noisy notes of fame,
Tendeth to its deeper scorn; as if it were to call the mole a
mammoth.
Yet shall ye find the trader's babe dignified with sounding titles,
And little hath the father guessed the harm he did his child:
For either may they breed him discontent, a peevish repining at his
station,
Or point the finger of despite at the mule in the trappings of an
elephant:
And it is a kind of theft to filch appellations from the famous,
A soiling of the shrines of praise with folly's vulgar herd.
Prudence hath often gone ashamed for the name they added to his
father's,
If minds of mark and great achievements bore it well before;
For he walketh as the jay in the fable, though not by his own folly,
Another's fault hath compassed his misfortune, making him a martyr
to his name.

Who would call the tench a whale, or style a torch, Orion?

Yet many a silly parent hath dealt likewise with his nurseling.
Give thy child a fit distinguishment, making him sole tenant of a
name,
For it were a sore hindrance to hold it in common with a hundred:
In the Babel of confused identities fame is little feasible,
The felon shall detract from the philanthropist, and the sage share
honours with the simple:
Still, in thy title of distinguishment, fall not into arrogant assumption,
Steering from caprice and affectations; and for all thou doest, have a
reason.
He that is ambitious for his son, should give him untried names,
For those that have served other men, haply may injure by their
evils;
Or otherwise may hinder by their glories; therefore, set him by
himself,
To win for his individual name some clear specific praise.
There were nine Homers, all goodly sons of song, but where is any
record of the eight?
One grew to fame, an Aaron's rod, and swallowed up his brethren:
Who knoweth? more distinctly titled, those dead eight had lived;
But the censers were ranged in a circle to mingle their sweets
without a difference.

Art thou named of a common crowd, and sensible of high aspirings?

It is hard for thee to rise,—yet strive: thou mayest be among them a
Musæus.
Art thou named of a family, the same in successive generations?
It is open to thee still to earn for epithets, such an one, the good or
great.
Art thou named foolishly? Show that thou art wiser than thy fathers;
Live to shame their vanity or sin by dutiful devotion to thy sphere.
Art thou named discreetly? It is well, the course is free;
No competitor shall claim thy colours, neither fix his faults upon
thee:
Hasten to the goal of fame between the posts of duty,
And win a blessing from the world, that men may love thy name:
Yea, that the unction of its praise, in fragrance well deserving,
May float adown the stream of time, like ambergris at sea;
So thy sons may tell their sons, and those may teach their children,
He died in goodness, as he lived;—and left us his good name.
And more than these: there is a roll whereon thy name is written;
See that, in the Book of Doom, that name is fixed in light:
Then, safe within a better home, where time and its titles are not
found,
God will give thee His new Name, and write it on thy heart:
A Name better than of sons, a Name dearer than of daughters,
A Name of union, peace, and praise, as numbered in thy God.

OF THINGS.
AKEN separately from all substance, and flying with the
feathered flock of thoughts,
The idea of a thing hath the nature of its Soul, a separate
seeming essence:
Intimately linked to the idea, suggesting many qualities,
The name of a thing hath the nature of its Mind, an
intellectual recorder:
And the matter of a thing, concrete, is a Body to the
perfect creature,
Compacted three in one, as all things else within the
universe.
Nothing canst thou add to them, and nothing take away, for all have
these proportions,
The thought, the word, the form, combining in the Thing:
All separate, yet harmonizing well, and mingled each with other,
One whole in several parts, yet each part spreading to a whole:
The idea is a whole; and the meaning phrase that spake idea, a
whole;
And the matter, as ye see it, is a whole; the mystery of true triunity:
Yea, there is even a deeper mystery,—which none, I wot, can
fathom,
Matter, different from properties whereby the solid substance is
described;
For, size and weight, cohesion and the like, live distinct from matter,
Yet who can imagine matter, unendowed with size and weight?
As in the spiritual, so in the material, man must rest with patience,
And wait for other eyes wherewith to read the books of God.
Men have talked learnedly of atoms, as if matter could be ever
indivisible;
They talk, but ill are skilled to teach, and darken truth by fancies:
An atom by our grosser sense was never yet conceived,
And nothing can be thought so small, as not to be divided:
For an atom runneth to infinity, and never shall be caught in space,
And a molecule is no more indivisible than Saturn's belted orb.
Things intangible, multiplied by multitudes, never will amass to
substance,
Neither can a thing which may be touched, be made of impalpable
proportions;
The sum of indivisibles must needs be indivisible, as adding many
nothings,
And the building up of atoms into matter is but a silly sophism;
Lucretius, and keen Anaximander, and many that have followed in
their thoughts,
(For error hath a long black shadow, dimming light for ages,)
In the foolishness of men without a God fancied to fashion Matter
Of intangibles, and therefore uncohering, indivisibles, and therefore
Spirit.

Things breed thoughts; therefore at Thebes and Heliopolis,

In hieroglyphic sculptures are the priestly secrets written:
Things breed thoughts; therefore was the Athens of idolatry
Set with carved images, frequent as the trees of Academus:
Things breed thoughts; therefore the Brahmin and the Burman
With mythologic shapes adorn their coarse pantheon:
Things breed thoughts; therefore the statue and the picture,
Relics, rosaries, and miracles in act, quicken the Papist in his
worship:
Things breed thoughts; therefore the lovers at their parting,
Interchanged with tearful smiles the dear reminding tokens:
Things breed thoughts; therefore when the clansman met his foe,
The bloodstained claymore in his hand revived the memories of
vengeance.
Things teach with double force; through the animal eye, and through
the mind,
And the eye catcheth in an instant, what the ear shall not learn
within an hour.
Thence is the potency of travel, the precious might of its advantages
To compensate its dissipative harm, its toil and cost and danger.
Ulysses, wandering to many shores, lived in many cities,
And thereby learnt the minds of men, and stored his own more
richly:
Herodotus, the accurate and kindly, spake of that he saw,
And reaped his knowledge on the spot, in fertile fields of Egypt:
Lycurgus culled from every clime the golden fruits of justice;
And Plato roamed through foreign lands, to feed on truth in all.
For travel, conversant with Things, bringeth them in contact with the
mind;
We breathe the wholesome atmosphere about ungarbled truth:
Pictures of fact are painted on the eye, to decorate the house of
intellect,
Rather than visions of fancy, filling all the chambers with a vapour.
For, in Ideas, the great mind will exaggerate, and the lesser
extenuate truth;
But in Things the one is chastened, and the other quickened, to
equality:
And in Names,—though a property be told, rather than some
arbitrary accident,
Still shall the thought be vague or false, if none have seen the Thing:
For in Things the property with accident standeth in a mass concrete,
These cannot cheat the sense, nor elude the vigilance of spirit.
Travel is a ceaseless fount of surface education,
But its wisdom will be simply superficial, if thou add not thoughts to
things:
Yet, aided by the varnish of society, things may serve for thoughts,
Till many dullards that have seen the world shall pass for scholars:
Because one single glance will conquer all descriptions,
Though graphic, these left some unsaid, though true, these tended
to some error;
And the most witless eye that saw, had a juster notion of its object,
Than the shrewdest mind that heard and shaped its gathered
thoughts of Things.

OF FAITH.
CONFIDENCE was bearer of the palm; for it looked like conviction of
desert:
And where the strong is well assured, the weaker soon allow it.
Majesty and Beauty are commingled, in moving with immutable
decision,
And well may charm the coward hearts that turn and hide for fear.
Faith, firmness, confidence, consistency,—these are well allied;
Yea, let a man press on in aught, he shall not lack of honour:
For such an one seemeth as superior to the native instability of
creatures;
That he doeth, he doeth as a god, and men will marvel at his
courage.
Even in crimes, a partial praise cannot be denied to daring,
And many fearless chiefs have won the friendship of a foe.

Confidence is conqueror of men; victorious both over them and in

them;
The iron will of one stout heart shall make a thousand quail:
A feeble dwarf, dauntlessly resolved, will turn the tide of battle,
And rally to a nobler strife the giants that had fled;
The tenderest child, unconscious of a fear, will shame the man to
danger,
And when he dared it, danger died, and faith had vanquished fear.
Boldness is akin to power: yea, because ignorance is weakness,
Knowledge with unshrinking might will nerve the vigorous hand:
Boldness hath a startling strength; the mouse may fright a lion,
And oftentimes the horned herd is scared by some brave cur.
Courage hath analogy with faith, for it standeth both in animal and
moral;
The true is mindful of a God, the false is stout in self:
But true or false, the twain are faith; and faith worketh wonders:
Never was a marvel done upon the earth, but it had sprung of faith:
Nothing noble, generous, or great, but faith was the root of the
achievement;
Nothing comely, nothing famous, but its praise is faith.
Leonidas fought in human faith, as Joshua in divine:
Xenophon trusted to his skill, and the sons of Mattathias to their
cause:
In faith Columbus found a path across those untried waters;
The heroines of Arc and Saragossa fought in earthly faith:
Tell was strong, and Alfred great, and Luther wise, by faith;
Margaret by faith was valiant for her son, and Wallace mighty for his
people:
Faith in his reason made Socrates sublime, as faith in his science,
Galileo:
Ambassadors in faith are bold, and unreproved for boldness:
Faith urged Fabius to delays, and sent forth Hannibal to Cannæ:
Cæsar at the Rubicon, Miltiades at Marathon; both were sped by
faith.
I set not all in equal spheres: I number not the martyr with the
patriot;
I class not the hero with his horse, because the twain have courage;
But only for ensample and instruction, that all things stand by faith;
Albeit faith of divers kinds, and varying in degree.
There is a faith towards men, and there is a faith towards God;
The latter is the gold and the former is the brass; but both are sturdy
metal:
And the brass mingled with the gold floweth into rich Corinthian;
A substance bright and hard and keen, to point Achilles' spear:
So shall thou stop the way against the foes that hem thee;
Trust in God to strengthen man;—be bold, for He doth help.

Yet more: for confidence in man, even to the worst and meanest,
Hath power to overcome his ill, by charitable good.
Fling thine unreserving trust even on the conscience of a culprit,
Soon wilt thou shame him by thy faith, and he will melt and mend:
The nest of thieves will harm thee not, if thou dost bear thee boldly;
Boldly, yea and kindly, as relying on their honour:
For the hand so stout against aggression, is quite disarmed by
charity;
And that warm sun will thaw the heart case-hardened by long frost.
Treat men gently, trust them strongly, if thou wish their weal;
Or cautious doubt and bitter thoughts will tempt the best to foil thee.
Believe the well in sanguine hope, and thou shall reap the better;
But if thou deal with men so ill, thy dealings make them worse;
Despair not of some gleams of good still lingering in the darkest,
And among veterans in crime, plead thou as with their children:
So, astonied at humanities, the bad heart long estranged,
Shall even weep to feel himself so little worth thy love;
In wholesome sorrow will he bless thee; yea, and in that spirit may
repent;
Thus wilt thou gain a soul, in mercy given to thy Faith.

Look aside to lack of faith, the mass of ills it bringeth:

All things treacherous, base, and vile, dissolving the brotherhood of
men.
Bonds break; the cement hath lost its hold; and each is separate
from other;
That which should be neighbourly and good, is cankered into
bitterness and evil.
O thou serpent, fell Suspicion, coiling coldly round the heart,—
O thou asp of subtle Jealousy, stinging hotly to the soul,—
O distrust, reserve, and doubt,—what reptile shapes are here,
Poisoning the garden of a world with death among its flowers!
No need of many words, the tale is easy to be told;
A point will touch the truth, a line suggest the picture.
For if, in thine own home, a cautious man and captious,
Thou hintest at suspicion of a servant, thou soon wilt make a thief;
Or if, too keen in care, thou dost evidently disbelieve thy child,
Thou hast injured the texture of his honour, and smoothed to him
the way of lying:
Or if thou observest upon friends, as seeking thee selfishly for
interest,
Thou hast hurt their kindliness to thee, and shalt be paid with scorn;
Or if, O silly ones of marriage, your foul and foolish thoughts,
Harshly misinterpreting in each the levity of innocence for sin,
Shall pour upon the lap of home pain where once was pleasure,
And mix contentions in the cup, that mantled once with comforts,
Bitterly and justly shall ye rue the punishment due to unbelief;
Ye trust not each the other, nor the mutual vows of God;
Take heed, for the pit may now be near, a pit of your own digging,—
Faith abused tempteth unto crime, and doubt may make its monster.
Man verily is vile, but more in capability than action;
His sinfulness is deep, but his transgressions may be few, even from
the absence of temptation:
He is hanging in a gulf midway, but the air is breathable about him:
Thrust him not from that slight hold, to perish in the vapours
underneath.
For, God pleadeth with the deaf, as having ears to hear,
Christ speaketh to the dead, as those that are capable of living;
And an evil teacher is that man, a tempter to much sin,
Who looketh on his hearers with distrust, and hath no confidence in
brethren.
All may mend; and sympathies are healing: and reason hath its
influence with the worst;
And in those worst is ample hope, if only thou hast charity, and faith.

Somewhiles have I watched a man exchanging the sobriety of faith,

Old lamps for new,—even for fanatical excitements.
He gained surface, but lost solidity; heat, in lieu of health;
And still with swelling words and thoughts he scorned his ancient
coldness:
But, his strength was shorn as Samson's; he walked he knew not
whither;
Doubt was on his daily path; and duties shewed not certain:
Until, in an hour of enthusiasm, stung with secret fears,
He pinned the safety of his soul on some false prophet's sleeve.
And then, that sure word failed; and with it, failed his faith;
It failed, and fell; O deep and dreadful was his fall in faith!
He could not stop, with reason's rein, his coursers on the slope,
And so they dashed him down the cliff of hardened unbelief.
With overreaching grasp he had strained for visionary treasures,
But a fiend had cheated his presumption, and hurled him to despair.
So he lay in his blood, the victim of a credulous false faith,
And many nights, and night-like days, he dwelt in outer darkness.
But, within a while, his variable mind caught a new impression,
A new impression of the good old stamp, that sealed him when a
child:
He was softened, and abjured his infidelity; he was wiser, and
despised his credulity;
And turned again to simple faith more simply than before.
Experience had declared too well his mind was built of water,
And so, renouncing strength in self, he fixed his faith in God.

It is not for me to stipulate for creeds; Bible, Church, and Reason,

These three shall lead the mind, if any can, to truth.
But I must stipulate for faith: both God and man demand it:
Trust is great in either world, if any would be well.
Verily, the sceptical propensity is an universal foe;
Sneering Pyrrho never found, nor cared to find, a friend:
How could he trust another? and himself, whom would he not
deceive?
His proper gains were all his aim, and interests clash with kindness.
So, the Bedouin goeth armed, an enemy to all,
The spear is stuck beside his couch, the dagger hid beneath his
pillow.
For society, void of mutual trust, of credit, and of faith,
Would fall asunder as a waterspout, snapped from the cloud's
attraction.

Faith may rise into miracles of might, as some few wise have shown:
Faith may sink into credulities of weakness, as the mass of fools
have witnessed.
Therefore, in the first, saints and martyrs have fulfilled their mission,
Conquering dangers, courting deaths, and triumphing in all.
Therefore, in the last, the magician and the witch, victims of their
own delusion,
Have gained the bitter wages of impracticable sins.
They believed in allegiance with Satan; they worked in that belief,
And thereby earned the loss and harm of guilt that might not be.
For, faith hath two hands; with the one it addeth virtue to
indifferents;
Yea, it sanctified a Judith and a Jael, for what otherwise were
treachery and murder:
With the other hand it heapeth crime even on impossibles or
simples,
And many a wizard well deserved the faggot for his faith:
He trusted in his intercourse with evil, he sacrificed heartily to
fiends,
He withered up with curses to the limit of his will, and was vile,
because he thought himself a villain.

A great mind is ready to believe, for he hungereth to feed on facts,

And the gnawing stomach of his ignorance craveth unceasing to be
filled:
A little mind is boastful and incredulous, for he fancieth all
knowledge is his own,
So will he cavil at a truth; how should it be true, and he not know it?
—
There is an easy scheme, to solve all riddles by the sensual,
And thus, despising mysteries, to feel the more sufficient;
For it comforteth the foul hard heart, to reject the pure unseen,
And relieveth the dull soft head, to hinder one from gazing upon
vacancy.
True wisdom, labouring to expound, heareth others readily;
False wisdom, sturdy to deny, closeth up her mind to argument.
The sum of certainties is found so small, their field so wide an
universe,
That many things may truly be, which man hath not conceived:
The characters revealed of God are a strong mind's sole assurance
That any strangeness may not stand a sober theme for faith.
Ignorance being light denied, this ought to show the stronger in its
view,
But ignorance is commonly a double negative, both of light and
morals:
So, adding vanity to blindness, for ease, it taketh refuge in a doubt,
And aching soon with ceaseless doubt, it finisheth the strife by
misbelieving.
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