[From Beauty.] THE CONQUeror. THOU mightier than Manoah's son, whence is thy great strength, Ajax may rout a phalanx, but beauty shall enslave him single-handed: Light were the labor, and often-told the tale, to count the victories of beauty, Learning sitteth at her feet, and Idleness laboreth to please her; Despair came to her for counsel; and Bereavement was glad when she consoled; Justice putteth up his sword at the tear of supplicating beauty And Mercy, with indulgent haste, hath pardoned beauty's sin. For beauty is the substitute for all things, satisfying every absence, The rich delirious cup, to make all else forgotten. [From Beauty.] MENTAL SUPREMACY. THERE is a beauty of the reason: grandly independent of externals, Lit on a sudden as with glory, the brilliant light of mind: Who then imagined him deformed? intelligence is blazing on his forehead, There is empire in his eye, and sweetness on his lip, and his brown cheek glittereth with beauty: And I have known some Nireus of the camp, a varnished paragon of chamberers, Fine, elegant, and shapely, moulded as the masterpiece of Phidias, [From Beauty.] THE SOURCE OF MAN'S RULING PASSION. VERILY the fancy may be false, yet hath it met me in my musings, (As expounding the pleasantness of pleasure, but no ways extenuating license,) That even those yearnings after beauty, in wayward wanton youth, God, the undiluted good, is root and stock of beauty, A sweet returning to the well, from which our spirit flowed, Only, being burdened with the body, spiritual appetite is warped, He still thirsteth for the beautiful; but his delicate ideal hath grown gross, And the very sense of thirst hath been fevered from affection into passion. [From Indirect Influences.] ARGUMENT. THE weakness of accident is strong, where the strength of design is weak, reason. Contend not in wisdom with a fool, for thy sense maketh much of his conceit, And some errors never would have thriven, had it not been for learned refutation; Yea, much evil hath been caused by an honest wrestler for truth. [From Indirect Influences.] THE POWER OF SUGGESTION. HINTS, shrewdly strown, mightily disturb the spirit, Where a barefaced accusation would be too ridiculous for calumny: The sly suggestion touches nerves, and nerves contract the fronds, And the sensitive mimosa of affection trembleth to its root; And friendships, the growth of half a century, those oaks that laugh at storms, Have been cankered in a night by a worm, even as the prophet's gourd. Hast thou loved, and not known jealousy? for a sidelong look Can please or pain thy heart more than the multitude of proofs: Hast thou hated, and not learned that thy silent scorn Doth deeper aggravate thy foe than loud-cursing malice? — Thinkest thou the thousand eyes that shine with rapture on a ruin, And so, the rapid sketch winneth more praise to the painter, Than the consummate work elaborated on his easel: And so, the Helvetic lion caverned in the living rock Hath more of majesty and force, than if upon a marble pedestal. What hath charmed thine ear in music? Is it the labored theme, the curious fugue or cento, Nor rather the sparkles of intelligence flashing from some strange note Or the soft melody of sounds far sweeter for simplicity? What hath filled thy mind in reading? Is it the volume of detail, where all is orderly set down, The book carefully accurate, that counteth thee no better than a fool, Nor rather the half-suggested thoughts, the riddles thou mayest solve; The light analogy, or deep allusion, trusted to thy learning, The confidence implied in thy skill to unravel meaning mysteries? For ideas are ofttimes shy of the close furniture of words, And thought, wherein only is power, may be best conveyed by a suggestion. The flash that lighteth up a valley, amid the dark midnight of a storm, Coineth the mind with that scene sharper than fifty summers. [From Names.] ILL-CHRISTENED. WHO would call the tench a whale, or style a torch, Orion ? Yet many a silly parent hath dealt likewise with his nursling. Give thy child a fit distinguishment, making him sole tenant of a name, For it were 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 honors 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. 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. No competitor shall claim thy colors, neither fix his faults upon thee: And win a blessing from the world, that men may love thy name; [From Indirect Influences.] THE FORCE OF TRIFLES. A SENTENCE hath formed a character, and a character subdued a kingdom; A picture hath ruined souls, or raised them to commerce with the skies. Planets govern not the soul, nor guide the destinies of man, But trifles, lighter than straws, are levers in the building up of character. [From Neglect.] TO MURMURERS. YET Once more, griever at Neglect, hear me to thy comfort, or rebuke; For, after all thy just complaint, the world is full of love. For human benevolence is large, though many matters dwarf it, Prudence, ignorance, imposture, and the straitenings of circumstance and time. And if to the body, so to the mind, the mass of men are generous: Their estimate who know us best, is seldom seen to err: Be sure the fault is thine, as pride, or shallowness, or vanity, If all around thee, good and bad, neglect thy seeming merit. Therefore examine thy state, O'self-accounted martyr of Neglect, [From Memory.] HINTS OF PRE-EXISTENCE. WERE I at Petra, could I not declare, My soul hath been here before me? Am I strange to the columned halls, the calm dead grandeur of Palmyra ? Know I not thy mount, O Carmel! Have I not voyaged on the Danube Nor seen the glare of Arctic snows, nor the black tents of the Tartar? Is it then a dream, that I remember the faces of them of old? Be ye my judges, imaginative minds, full-fledged to soar into the sun, Whose grosser natural thoughts the chemistry of wisdom hath sublimed, Have ye not confessed to a feeling, a consciousness, strange and vague, That ye have gone this way before, and walk again your daily life, 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. [From Neglect.] LATE VALUATION. Good men are the health of the world, valued only when it perisheth; Who hath considered the blessing of his breath, till the poison of an asthma struck him? Who hath regarded the just pulses of his heart, till spasm or paralysis have stopped them? Even thus, an unobserved routine of daily grace and wisdom, When no more here, had worship of a world, whose penitence atoned for its neglect. [From Mystery.] FOREKNOWLEDGE UNDESIRABLE. FOR mystery is man's life; we wake to the whisperings of novelty: Sweeten or embitter daily life with the honey-gall of mystery. For we walk blindfold, and a minute may be much, -a step may reach the precipice; What earthly loss, what heavenly gain, may not this day produce? Levelled of Alps and Andes, without its valleys and ravines, How dull the face of earth, unfeatured of both beauty and sublimity: And so, shorn of mystery, beggared in its hopes and fears, How flat the prospect of existence, mapped by intuitive foreknowledge? [From To-Day.] LIFE. A MAN'S life is a tower, with a staircase of many steps, That, as he toileth upward, crumble successively behind him: No going back, the past is an abyss; no stopping, for the present perisheth; But ever hasting on, precarious on the foothold of To-day. [From To-Morrow.] THE WORD OF BANE AND BLESSING. OFTEN, the painful present is comforted by flattering the future. To-morrow, whispereth weakness; and To-morrow findeth him the weaker. Thou hope and fear, thou weal and woe, thou remedy, thou ruin, |