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. [Illustration: "M"] Mind 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;