Cease awhile, gentle scholar;--seek other thoughts and themes; Or dazzling Fame with wildfire light shall lure us on for ever. For look, all subjects of the mind may range beneath its banner, And time would fail and patience droop, to count that numerous host. The mine is deep, and branching wide,--and who can work it out? Years of thought would leave untold the boundless topic, Fame. Every matter in the universe is linked in suchwise unto others, That a deep full treatise upon one thing might reach to the history of all things: And before some single thesis had been followed out in all its branches, The wandering thinker would be lost in the pathless forest of existence. What were the matter or the spirit, that hath no part in Fame? Where were the fact irrelevant, or the fancy out of place? For the handling of that mighty theme should stretch from past to future, Catching up the present on its way, as a traveller burdened with time. All manner of men, their deeds, hopes, fortunes, and ambitions, All manner of events and things, climate, circumstance, and custom, Wealth and war, fear and hope, contentment, jealousy, devotion, Skill and learning, truth, falsehood, knowledge of things gone and things to come, Pride and praise, honour and dishonour, warnings, ensamples, emulations, The excellent in virtues, and the reprobate in vice, with the cloud of indifferent spectators,-- Wave on wave with flooding force throng the shoals of thought, Filling that immeasurable theme, the height and depth of Fame. With soul unsatisfied and mind dismayed, my feet have touched the threshold, Fain to pour these flowers and fruits an offering on that altar: Lo, how vast the temple,--there are clouds within the dome! Yet might the huge expanse be filled, with volumes writ on Fame. OF FLATTERY. [Illustration: "M"] Music is commended of the deaf:--but is that praise despised? I trow not: with flattered soul the musician heard him gladly. Beauty is commended of the blind:--but is that compliment misliking? I trow not: though false and insincere, woman listened greedily. Vacant Folly talketh high of Learning's deepest reason: Is she hated for her hollowness?--learning held her wiser for the nonce. The worldly and the sensual, to gain some end, did homage to religion: And the good man gave thanks as for a convert, where others saw the hypocrite.