Things breed thoughts; therefore at Thebes and Heliopolis, In hieroglyphic sculptures are the priestly secrets written: Things breed thoughts; therefore was the Athens of idolatry Set with carved images, frequent as the trees of Academus: Things breed thoughts; therefore the Brahmin and the Burman With mythologic shapes adorn their coarse pantheon: Things breed thoughts; therefore the statue and the picture, Relics, rosaries, and miracles in act, quicken the Papist in his worship: Things breed thoughts; therefore the lovers at their parting, Interchanged with tearful smiles the dear reminding tokens: Things breed thoughts; therefore when the clansman met his foe, The bloodstained claymore in his hand revived the memories of vengeance. Things teach with double force; through the animal eye, and through the mind, And the eye catcheth in an instant, what the ear shall not learn within an hour. Thence is the potency of travel, the precious might of its advantages To compensate its dissipative harm, its toil and cost and danger. Ulysses, wandering to many shores, lived in many cities, And thereby learnt the minds of men, and stored his own more richly: Herodotus, the accurate and kindly, spake of that he saw, And reaped his knowledge on the spot, in fertile fields of Egypt: Lycurgus culled from every clime the golden fruits of justice; And Plato roamed through foreign lands, to feed on truth in all. For travel, conversant with Things, bringeth them in contact with the mind; We breathe the wholesome atmosphere about ungarbled truth: Pictures of fact are painted on the eye, to decorate the house of intellect, Rather than visions of fancy, filling all the chambers with a vapour. For, in Ideas, the great mind will exaggerate, and the lesser extenuate truth; But in Things the one is chastened, and the other quickened, to equality: And in Names,--though a property be told, rather than some arbitrary accident, Still shall the thought be vague or false, if none have seen the Thing: For in Things the property with accident standeth in a mass concrete, These cannot cheat the sense, nor elude the vigilance of spirit. Travel is a ceaseless fount of surface education, But its wisdom will be simply superficial, if thou add not thoughts to things: Yet, aided by the varnish of society, things may serve for thoughts, Till many dullards that have seen the world shall pass for scholars: Because one single glance will conquer all descriptions, Though graphic, these left some unsaid, though true, these tended to some error; And the most witless eye that saw, had a juster notion of its object, Than the shrewdest mind that heard and shaped its gathered thoughts of Things. [Illustration: of faith] OF FAITH.