You look at what I've done and what I am,
And, from the vantage of your own success,
Tell what I should have done and might have been,
Or might become, if yet I would do so.

Alas! alas! vain counsel. You would turn,
Into the channel'd vale, the brook that sings
Its heaven-appointed song in lonesome glen.
Of rare utility the deepen'd stream
That bears its wealth of barges, and brings joy
To citizens and villagers, well fed:
But he that wanders, lonely and half lost,
To seek, he knows not what, among the hills,
Oft gets a whisper from the untutor'd brook,
That makes him richer than the freighted stream —
A simple native growth you would transform
Into the floral wonder of a day.
There's luxury of beauty in that heath,
Nurtured within conservatory shades:
But, lonely on the mountain, I have caught
Diviner tinklings in the purple bells.

And if, my friend, I could reach the success
That you predict, I know not if I would .
'Twould not be my success, unless I gave
The offering to the world I want to give
For each should bring his true, his only self,
And give that freely, be it praised or damn'd
The world wants nothing else, and, damn'd or praised,
'Twill be to the world something that it needs.
The primrose and the violet, and each
New comer, breathes into the sweeten'd air
Its own peculiar being; and each gives —
Who knows? — a something needed by the air:
For has not God in each a special thought?
They do not breathe in vain. Could we, like them,
Yield up our inspiration, great or small,
Each life would be a blessing to the world.

But few there be that do not choke the spring,
Or turn aside the stream. Not knowing God
Has some new thought for each, we waste our lives
In seeking to repeat some faithful one,
Whose glory lures us, while our own sinks back
To the eternal cistern, and we lose —
Or get some poor reflection of — them both.

Thanks for thy counsel, friend. There was a time
When 'twould have been thrice welcome. But I've learn'd
That he, who would unfold God's thought in him —
And which alone is his success — must take
His counsel from within. If in thy heart
Springs early a desire to do one thing
Above all other things; if that has grown
And deepen'd with the years, while each new stroke
Towards achievement fill'd thee with a joy,
Which thou could'st tell was heavenly — do that,
Though not a soul, as yet, applaud the deed.

'Tis true, I might give that which would amuse —
E'en while amusing, teach the passing hour,
And gain me plaudits, profit, and a name.
Alas! however much I might incline,
Time serves not, stern necessity forbids,
And I forego the elaborative work.

Give thanks for this: the world's too full of books:
It breaks my heart, that life's too short to read
Even a choice selection. Add still more?
I tremble, friend, upon the brink of crime!

Yet do I burn to write. I may not rest
In virtuous silence; but I would be brief.
I'd bring some linnet-warblings from the brake
Between the fields of mirth and glebes of tears; —
I'd bring some daisies from the meads of heaven;
Some pearly shells from the eternal shore;
And from the whispering conclaves of the gods,
Some high immortal thoughts. These would I give,
As simply and as truly as I may.

God help my weakness! I have not the wing
To reach the spheres; and, ever when I rise,
Some small imperious duty calls me back; —
Nor yet the searching analytic brain
To grapple with my subject, and expose
Its strength or weakness. If I ever give
High utterance, it comes, I know not how. —
The power, the culture, and the leisure — all
Are wanting, yet I'd do what needs them all!
What then? All truth and beauty do not come
From labour'd fields; and if I may not cull
A large, rich offering, I may pluck, at least,
Some wayside flowers, not proudly to be pass'd; —
Or, driven to the moors of thought, may bring
Some rarity the favour'd ne'er could find;
And thus my speciality fulfil.

And yet, where is the need of even that? —
I lose all heart to see the floods of thought,
Drain'd through the press, and then lost, lost,
As in a quicksand! And the shelves of books,
Innumerable, glorious, some divine,
But most unopen'd, and still more unread! —
They kill my hope! what need, what use of more?
I never can o'ertake the daily race —
It over-rides me quite — O, help me, Heaven!

What! can it be that books have higher life
Than this of printed character? Can thought
Have any real being in these signs?
Or do they but dispose us to receive
The inflow of the elsewhere living thought?
If trivial words, as some believe, do pass
Into eternal record, how much more
That glorious agony, an earnest book!
If all this beauty — forest, lake and hill —
And even the fact of city, loom, or plough,
Be but the symbol, and the outer side
Of finer beauty and of truer fact,
To which death's gate gives entrance, so are books
The symbols only of their real selves.
They pass into a higher type than print,
And wait us in the libraries of heaven —
Write on, write on, ye who have aught to give:
Ye have a higher audience otherwhere;
And we shall overtake you by-and-by