Who so shrewd as rightly to divide life, instinct, reason; Trees, zoophytes, creatures of the plain, and savage men among them? Hath the mimosa instinct,--or the scallop more than life,-- Or the dog less than reason,--or the brute-man more than instinct? What is the cause of health,--and the gendering of disease? Why should arsenic kill, and whence is the potency of antidotes? Behold, a morsel,--eat and die; the term of thy probation is expired: Behold, a potion,--drink and be alive; the limit of thy trial is enlarged. Who can expound beauty? or explain the character of nations? Who will furnish a cause for the epidemic force of fashion? Is there a moral magnetism living in the light of example? Is practice electricity?--Yet all these are but names. Doth normal Art imprison, in its works, spirit translated into substance, So that the statue, the picture, or the poem, are crystals of the mind? And doth Philosophy with sublimating skill shred away the matter, Till rarefied intelligence exudeth even out of stocks and stones? O Mysteries, ye all are one, the mind of an inexplicable Architect Dwelleth alike in each, quickening and moving in them all. Fields, and forests, and cities of men, their woes and wealth and works, And customs, and contrivances of life, with all we see and know, For a little way, a little while, ye hang dependent on each other, But all are held in one right-hand, and by His will ye are. Here is an answer unto mystery, an unintelligible God, This is the end and the beginning, it is reason that He be not understood. Therefore it were probable and just, even to a man's weak thinking, To have one for God who always may be learnt, yet never fully known: That He, from whom all mysteries spring, in whom they all converge, Throned in His sublimity beyond the grovellings of lower intellect, Should claim to be truer than man's truest, the boasted certainty of numbers, Should baffle his arithmetic, confound his demonstrations, and paralyse the might of his necessity, Standing supreme as the mystery of mysteries, everywhere, yet impersonate, Essential One in three, essential Three in one! OF GIFTS. [Illustration: "I"] I had a seeming friend;--I gave him gifts, and he was gone: I had an open enemy;--I gave him gifts, and won him: Common friendship standeth on equalities, and cannot bear a debt; But the very heart of hate melteth at a good man's love: Go to, then, thou that sayest,--I will give and rivet the links: For pride shall kick at obligation, and push the giver from him. The covetous spirit may rejoice, revelling in thy largess, But chilling selfishness will mutter,--I must give again: The vain heart may be glad, in this new proof of man's esteem, But the same idolatry of self abhorreth thoughts of thanking.