Few and precious are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter: To what shall their rarity be likened? What price shall count their worth? Perfect and much to be desired, and giving joy with riches, No lovely thing on earth can picture all their beauty. They be chance pearls, flung among the rocks by the sullen waters of Oblivion, Which Diligence loveth to gather, and hang around the neck of Memory; They be white-winged seeds of happiness, wafted from the islands of the blessed, Which Thought carefully tendeth, in the kindly garden of the heart; They be sproutings of an harvest for eternity, bursting through the tilth of time, Green promise of the golden wheat, that yieldeth angels' food; They be drops of the crystal dew, which the wings of seraphs scatter, When on some brighter sabbath, their plumes quiver most with delight: Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter. [Illustration] Yet more, for the half is not said, of their might, and dignity, and value; For life-giving be they and glorious, redolent of sanctity and heaven: As fumes of hallowed incense, that veil the throne of the Most High; As beaded bubbles that sparkle on the rim of the cup of immortality; As wreaths of the rainbow spray, from the pure cataracts of truth: Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter. Yet once again, loving student, suffer the praises of thy teacher, For verily the sun of the mind, and the life of the heart is Wisdom: She is pure and full of light, crowning grey hairs with lustre, And kindling the eye of youth with a fire not its own; And her words, whereunto canst thou liken them? for earth cannot show their peers: They be grains of the diamond sand, the radiant floor of heaven, Rising in sunny dust behind the chariot of God; They be flashes of the dayspring from on high, shed from the windows of the skies; They be streams of living waters, fresh from the fountain of Intelligence: Such, and so precious, are the words which the lips of Wisdom utter.