Some have said, What is in a name?--most potent plastic influence; A name is a word of character, and repetition stablisheth the fact: A word of rebuke, or of honour, tending to obscurity or fame; And greatest is the power of a name, when its power is least suspected. A low name is a thorn in the side, that hindereth the footman in his running; But a name of ancestral renown shall often put the racer to his speed. Few men have grown unto greatness whose names are allied to ridicule, And many would never have been profligate, but for the splendour of a name. A wise man scorneth nothing, be it never so small or homely, For he knoweth not the secret laws that may bind it to great effects. The world in its boyhood was credulous, and dreaded the vengeance of the stars, The world in its dotage is not wiser, fearing not the influence of small things: Planets govern not the soul, nor guide the destinies of man, But trifles, lighter than straws, are levers in the building up of character. A man hath the tiller in his hand, and may steer against the current, Or may glide down idly with the stream, till his vessel founder in the whirlpool. [Illustration: Helvetiorum Fidei ac Virtuti Die X Augusti II et III Septembris MDCCXCII] [Illustration] OF MEMORY. Where art thou, storehouse of the mind, garner of facts and fancies,-- In what strange firmament are laid the beams of thine airy chambers? Or art thou that small cavern, the centre of the rolling brain, Where still one sandy morsel testifieth man's original? Or hast thou some grand globe, some common hall of intellect, Some spacious market-place for thought, where all do bring their wares, And gladly rescued from the littleness, the narrow closet of a self, The privileged soul hath large access, coming in the livery of learning? Live we as isolated worlds, perfect in substance and spirit, Each a sphere, with a special mind, prisoned in its shell of matter? Or rather, as converging radiations, parts of one majestic whole, Beams of the Sun, streams from the River, branches of the mighty Tree, Some bearing fruit, some bearing leaves, and some diseased and barren,-- Some for the feast, some for the floor, and some--how many--for the fire? Memory may be but a power of coming to the treasury of Fact, A momentary self-desertion, an absence in spirit from the Now, An actual coursing hither and thither, by the mind, slipped from its leash, A life, as in the mystery of dreams, spent within the limits of a moment.