[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,
It may be, thy merit is a cubit, and thy measure thereof a furlong:
But grant it greater than thy thoughts, and grant that men thy fellows
For pleasure, business, or interest, misuse, forget, neglect thee, —
Still be thou conqueror in this, the consciousness of high deservings;
Let it suffice thee to be worthy; faint not thou for praise;
For that thou art, be grateful; go humbly even in thy confidence;
And set thy foot on the neck of an enemy so harmless as 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;
Like water, light, and air, all precious in their absence.

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:
And what though we lie down disappointed? we sleep, to wake in hope.
The letter, or the news, the chances and the changes, matters that may
happen,

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.
And kind To-morrow beareth half the burdens of To-day.

To-morrow, whispereth weakness; and To-morrow findeth him the weaker.
To-morrow, promiseth conscience; and behold, no to-day for a fulfilment.
O name of happy omen unto youth, O bitter word of terror to the dotard,
Goal of folly's lazy wish, and sorrow's ever-coming friend,

Fraud's loophole, caution's hint, and trap to catch the honest,
Thou wealth to many poor, disgrace to many noble,

Thou hope and fear, thou weal and woe, thou remedy, thou ruin,
How thickly swarms of thought are clustering round To-morrow.

[From To-Morrow.]

PROCRASTINATION.

Lo, it is the even of To-day, -a day so lately a To-morrow;
Where are those high resolves, those hopes of yesternight?

O faint heart, still shall thy whisper be, To-morrow,

And must the growing avalanche of sin roll down that easy slope ?

Alas, it is ponderous, and moving on in might, that a Sisyphus may not stop it;

But haste thee with the lever of a prayer, and stem its strength To-day.

HENRY VAUGHAN.

THE SEED GROWING SECRETLY. | Then bless thy secret growth, nor

And moons, though full, would get Their very memory is fair and bright,