University of Virginia Library

Upon a dim and clouded wintry morn
I watch'd a little bird that sat alone
Upon a leafless branch of an oak tree,
Lifting a sweet but solitary note;
And then it look'd about, as if awhile
Expectant of an answer; but full soon
Another sounded from a neighbouring wood,
Another and another; then anew
He would the strain repeat, and wait again;
Till many slender voices join'd the call
With something of sweet sadness, rather say
Sweetening the sadness of the coming on
Of winter with a cheering note of trust.

Thus they that fear the Lord in the dark day
Shall often one unto another speak
In voices sad and low, yet such withal
As shall bring comfort to the evil time,
And God shall bow His ear, and hear their sighs,
And write them in His book, and on the day
When He makes up His jewels, on that day
He shall remember them: they shall be His.

The song of birds—how oft it seems to meet
Our spirits in their sadness, and reprove!
Thus that low note came like a prophet's voice,
Predictive of clear skies and open days.
I know of nought in nature which more speaks
The tender mercies and the love of God,
Than do those feather'd strains. When we are sad,
And some bereavement or depressing weight
Hath prison'd us and darken'd all our day,
That voice, on air or bough, hath a strange charm,
Because it speaks of God, brings to the heart
Whispers from Him in this our fallen world,
Like Christ's own parable: He seems to say,
“Hear ye the birds, their little lives are brief,
And long their winters, yet they speak of One,
Who is their God and yours, and that He is
A God of consolation and of hope.”

And now 'neath wintry leaves, which linger still,
The buds are hid of the new vernal year;
And thus the Spirit and the Bride repeat,
“The Night is now far spent, the Day at hand,”
On each returning Advent, which anew
Breaks, ere the sun hath closed his annual course,
The year of Grace ere Nature's year hath pass'd.
E'en so the Evangelic morn itself,
That ushers in the kingdom, hath begun
The everlasting cycle of new years,
Ere yet the waning world hath reach'd its end.
Heaven's hallow'd morning hath commenced ere yet
Night muffles up the eye of this world's day,
Beginning ere the end, beginning that
Which knows no end; for the eternal dawn
Is even now purpling the Eastern hills,
While Evening lingers in the vale below;
And on the mountain heights the feet are seen
Shod with the silver tidings of the Morn.

Thus, too, before the going down of life,
May the meek Advent of the Son of Man,
The kindlings of His Grace—the morning star—
The preparations of a better life,
Cheer the sad setting of this worldly scene;
On tearful retrospections of the past,
With other hopes which are not of the night,
Lighting the rainbow of a brighter day.

'Tis Advent! and as men that half asleep
Hear the cock crow the watches of the night
Before the Day-star, and then turn again
Their weary sides and dream; then hear anon
The larum of another watch gone by:
So hears the world that call which says, “He comes!”
And turns again to sleep. Oh, may we hear
As Peter heard that sound, nor hear in vain!

What shall it be, and when? that one great Morn!
This is the age of Knowledge, can she tell
Nothing of that? From bowels of the earth
In which she delves for jewels and for gold,—
From stars she climbs and walks, hath she brought home
No glimpse, no ray to tell us of that Light?

No! it shall be as if men, who had known
Nought but a dungeon of enduring dark,
Were suddenly to see the summer sun
Rising in all its glory, on the hills,
Valleys, and streams, and men: like this shall burst
The Day of days. We know not how, nor when;
But this we know, most soon, most suddenly:
So soon, 'tis said to be already come;
So suddenly, that all shall be amazed:
For that its coming shall be like the net
Brought by a fowler on a moonlight night
Upon a feather'd flock in harvest-field.

Wonderful are God's works we now behold,
The altitudes of mountains and their bulk,
Their broad magnificence, their climbing Heaven,
Clothed with the sun, while shadows on their side
Majestic move in wild sublimity,
Enlarging, yet subduing, hearts with awe.
Wonderful, too, the Sea with all his ways:
His solitary vastness never still,
Whether it be on some tempestuous night,
Foaming on high against the angry rocks,
Or sleeping in the placid summer noon;
With all his sounds and marvels of the deep,
Ennobling our imaginings, himself
The mirror of omnipotence amid
The little ways of artificial life.
And wonderful Night's star-illumined roof,
Hung with its silver lamps, like some vast shrine;
The dark-blue waste on fire with pearl-white orbs,
Like jewels in the bottom of the deep—
An amphitheatre of living eyes,
With strange unearthly brightness looking on,
As gifted with serene intelligence.
Ranging in measured bounds of space and time,
Yet so exceeding vast, as if design'd
The eternal and the infinite to speak:
For in those fires, as in the Burning Bush,
We see and hear the Everlasting Name.
And wonderful the creatures of God's hand,
Surrounding us with their instinctive ways,
In greatness and in littleness, alike
Unfathomable both. And wonderful
Is man in all his mould of mind and frame;
The spirit with its fleshly garb inwreath'd,
So simple, yet so complicate in both,
Fashion'd a living temple without hands.
So wonderful is all we see of God,
Intricate paths of wisdom without end,
From less to less, from great to greater still.

Such things declare what wonders beyond all
The day of God's great wisdom will reveal;
How wonderful beyond all wonders then
Must be that day which is the day of God,
When all His wisdom and His Providence,
And all His attributes of great and good,
Shall fully be made known and manifest
To all the sons of God throughout all worlds:
That Day of Days that waiteth at the door.
It needs must be so, and the morning light
Suddenly breaking on a man born blind
Must be of such a feeble counterpart;
And therefore all man's speculative thoughts,
Of what it may or what it needs must be,
Are arrows shot forth in the dark. That flash
Lightning-like may expand the universe,
The landscape that hath no horizon's verge,
The day which hath no evening at its close,
Infinite space, and time too infinite,
And the before and after of all worlds;
Nay more—vast worlds which all about us lie,
Of which we know not now, and cannot know.

For of His wisdom now we see below
But glimpses in the dark, and by our sin
Made scant and profitless; but then shall be
The wisdom of all wisdom fully known.

Then shall these frames be changed and glorified;—
But what is glory? whence the ideal gain'd?
From glory of the world and things therein,
Or that which dwells within the glittering tower
Of gold upon the head. Or it may be
We think of glory as a blaze of light
Beyond all brightness, dazzling as the sun.
Yet there is glory in a dim obscure,
As sometimes in the silence of the night,
Or hornèd moon of an autumnal eve,
Sublimer than the effulgence of the day.
Then if the sun, with all this colour'd scene
He lights, be not sufficient for the theme
Of this great argument, then let us take
Midnight for our companion by the way,
The moon shall be our lamp, and let us blend
Our meditations with the awful stars.
But what are they? No more than shining spots
Of silver in the dark. But then no doubt
Our faculties shall waken to perceive,
Or faculties be new vouchsafed withal
To enter in all wisdom, and to know
Our gain or loss!

Then with a dread surprise,
Joyful or sad, beyond all joy or grief,
With wing of lightning and a thunder tongue,
Shall come the Thought that meets the wakening soul;
In that new sunshine, things that seem'd erewhile
Most solid shall be seen to melt and move,
Moulding themselves as clouds, and pass away.

For death is as the night that wraps in sleep,
Though dread in the magnificence of stars;
But resurrection is as rising morn,
With keys that ope the palace of the sun.
For not of death, but Judgment, speaks the voice
Of Scripture, when the Sun of Righteousness,
In whom the spirits of the righteous sleep,
Shall unveil on the regions of the dead
His locks encircled with eternal Day.
Hence morning unto morning tells the tale
Of resurrection, oft as dawning light
Breaks, like a new creation of the world,
Which folds and puts away the Heavens that were.

Though great and little are alike with God,
Yet then His wisdom and omnipotence
In twofold form will overwhelm our thoughts,
In greatness and in littleness. In these
We trace them now with wonder and amaze,
Until we come to limits of our sense,
Branching into the Infinite and lost.
Alps and Atlantic Oceans, mountain heights,
The moving wastes of water, skies and suns,
The multitudinous array of night,
Down to the speckled shell, the wild sea-weed,
Or antler'd insect ranging on the leaf.

In greatness and in littleness, for thus
Where Revelation holds her mirror up
Kingdoms of grace respond to things we see:
In greatness, for it speaks of deathless death
In a consuming fire that goes not out,
For ever and for ever without end—
A gulf that has no bottom where they fall.
It speaks in words determinate and full
Of being fashion'd as the sons of God,
Made like the angels which can never die,
Of dwelling for eternity with God;
And that the opening to this state shall be
The lifting of the curtain suddenly
To see this theatre of things that are,
With earthquakes usher'd in, and with the Heaven
Falling with earth together, like a house
With roof and walls tumbling in midst of flames,
And sun and stars of this great universe
Dropping like figs when shaken from the tree.
And this the language and the words of God
I thus interpret, that it shall be vast
As to transcend all present faculties,
As we shall then have given us power to know.
For now, when we would measure works of God,
They leave us soon behind without the means
To follow, hedged about with the Divine,
Encompass'd with a sea without a shore.
But then we shall be gifted with wing'd powers,
Able to traverse them to an extent
Of which we deem not now, and into which
These words, which are of God, would lead us on
As near as our weak thoughts have power to go.

Again—alike it is in littleness;—
The vast and the sublime, if I may speak,
Do here extend as far as to the height,
And breadth, and length, thus go down to the deep;
For in the written record given of God
'Tis interspersed throughout with words that speak
Of Judgment so minute, that it transcends
Our thought, and it may be our feeble faith,
As much as in the vastness of the signs,
The consequence and dread concomitance.—
Words daily spoken in a balance weigh'd,
Thoughts long since pass'd into the Judgment brought,
Each deed connected with vast recompense,
Each day that passes coming up again,
Each light companion as a witness seen,
Each trivial chance as some great providence,
Bread cast upon the waters found again,
A little one a thousand,—passing word,
And passing thought, the hour of prayer, the clock,
The cup but of cold water;—many thus
The statements which to follow up and trace
Were like to search out hues and arteries
Upon a creeping insect scarce discern'd,
To track the spider's labyrinthine web,
Or through its hidden ways and windings wild
The gnat, as far as human thought can go.
Yet then I doubt not that there is implied
In declarations such as these from God,
That He will ope a mirror in the mind,
Or with His hand the curtain thence remove,
Which now o'erhangs the same beneath the soul,
And, letting in a sunbeam from His throne,
Reveal all our true selves unto ourselves,
And to each other, e'en as known to God.

And this I doubt not,—that the written words
Are nearest to the truth, and that 'tis vain
For our conjectures and imaginings
To calculate on modes how it may be.

And on this theme the rather would I dwell,
For that I know full well that where my faith
Hath totter'd or hath fallen, it hath been
In failing to hold fast and realize
The greatness and the littleness of life,—
The greatness of the things that are to be,
The littleness of things from which they spring,—
The greatness and the littleness which are
In ways of God among which now we dwell;
And the false estimate of both of these
Which in the heart the world instils, whene'er
It fills it, making little things appear
As great, and greatest things exceeding small,
Magnitudes without end thus dwindling down,
With a mote hiding some transcendent star.

For this our life seems great, while yet we live,
Because with it a soul is conversant
Which hath its own eternity within;
And so unconsciously exalts the things
Of this small day and night with which it deals,
Casting on them, as they pass by to nought,
Its own intrinsic dignity; and thus
Investing meanest objects of this life
Falls down and worships them—the name—the gold—
The farm—the merchandise—the high estate.
Because itself—in image made of God—
Its dread reality, its boundless power,
Its immortality it puts on them;
Thus in them sees the shadow of itself,
The shadow of its God; and therefore bows
And worships for a greatness not their own.

For whence the charm of glory, or of wealth?
'Tis Heaven reflected in a watery drop,
Which men behold, enamour'd of the sight;
And chaining down their faces to the ground
In that the image of the eternal place
Yearn for the substance, and with prone-bent brows
So turn their backs for ever on their God,
Beholding but reflections of His light.

Again; when looking on the times gone by,
Of ten—or fifty—or an hundred years—
Short, dwindled down they seem, and dwarf'd in space,
As the same soul into the Eternal Year
Expands her wing, infinite as itself.

Hence is the greatness and the littleness
Of this our life; thus God Himself comes down
In lowliness to the small day and hour,
And accidents of our mortality,—
The Babe at Bethlehem and the Eternal Word.
And if “our life be hid with Christ in God,”
This daily life we live, yet as in God
It must be great, although in little things,
As shall be known in that the Day of Days.

Moreover, love itself makes all things great,
Exalting by itself whate'er it fills;
Such is parental, such is bridal love,
And such is love Divine; by its sweet touch
Making most precious what had else no worth,
Ennobling what was mean, and what was low
Uplifting, and refining what was gross.
For love holds keys of Heaven, and love of Hell,
Although she feeds awhile on little things.
Love is true wisdom; love commands the will—
The will which moves and moulds the human soul.
For He who treasures up the widow's mite,
Notes in His book the lightest boon of love,
As done unto Himself, and therefore great.
He knows our every care, our every want,
And numbers every hair upon the head,
Seeking of us such love as He bestows.

Hence was the Jew's offence that fell of old,
Who would not see his God in David's son,—
The Infant—the Cross-Bearer; mainly this,
He could not separate what Prophets' words
Had interwoven so and wrought in one,
The first and second Coming; could not deem
Of littleness and greatness so combined,
As we count great and little; because Love
Was absent, which alone adjusts the scale.

And therefore till this day not understood
The Lord hath with him left that parable,
To which there is no key but that of love:
“How is it David in the Spirit calls
Him Lord, on the right hand of God enthroned
Till all things shall be placed beneath His feet?”

Yet further: this I deem must be the cause—
The greatness and the littleness of things
Which are to be reveal'd—that lowliness
On this our state as needful for all men
Is so inscribed in awful characters,
In characters of blood, the Blood of God.
Therefore 'tis the foundation and the crown
Of all in man accepted on that Day.
For that he then shall know his littleness
Amidst the boundless universe of God,
Creations on creations then disclosed,
His place in the vast family of God,
So small, yet not a wish to go beyond;
And it may be his littleness e'en now
'Mid unseen beings which environ him,
And of which all unconscious he lifts up
His bold front unto Heaven, of that great truth
Unmindful, what his fall hath been from God.

And then too of his greatness man shall know,
Which shall o'erwhelm him with all lowliness
And self-abasement, as of one new-made
In God's own image, risen from the grave;
The greatness of the Love that came from Heaven
To put on fleshly ills; of which e'en now
We hear and read, yet cannot understand.
So much the ways of God transcend our thought,
Knowing we are as those who know them not,
Save in faint glimmerings which through our flesh
His Spirit to our spirit may disclose.
That Love which came from God's own secret place,
And with our inmost selves makes itself one
In fellowship divine and brotherhood,
Union of heart with our heart, friend with friend,
Brother with brother, and about our path
Sharing our cares and wants,—those things which now
We read and hear and speak of, yet the while
In reading, hearing, speaking, are as those
Who know not—cannot know—as needs must be
When thus the earthly speaks of the Divine.
But then that greatness of ourselves reveal'd
Throughout the things of earth and times gone by,
E'en in exalting shall make doubly low,
As an unwonted greatness when made known
Depresses with the weight, by contrast felt,
And conscious knowledge of unworthiness.

But these are speculations blind and weak
Of such things as we know there are to be,
How they then may or must be; for although
While the world fails, from the eternal place
Light may break in through this our earthly house
As it gives way, but through the mouldering chinks
Athwart, askance the radiance falls, and makes
Fantastic shadows in the dubious dark,
That we mistake their semblance. Yet withal
Not altogether profitless to dwell
On such anticipations God hath given,
And interwoven now with our frail life,
Lights that with His own written Word conspire
To teach us wisdom.

I remember well
When I was sitting by the door of death,
Where fever left me, having drunk my strength;
By the fireside I sat, while one most dear
Read some light passing story, as perchance
Might soothe the o'er-wrought spirit. 'Twas a tale
That spoke of childhood and of boyish time.
But in me there appear'd to wake anew
The spirit of my early childish years,—
Associate with the things of which it spake,—
With such unwonted tenderness, that all
My soul seem'd that again of a small child;
With recollections which around me came;—
A long lost mother and a world of things
Arose, with all their own remember'd scenes;—
That it became an hour which ever since
Hath been like some clear spring, which hidden long
In marshy under-ways or verdant mead,
Steals forth again into some cradling rock
O'ergrown with moss and ivy and wild flowers,
Crystal-like pure, and with a trickling sound
Forth issues as a fountain-head renew'd.
E'en so that hour of reminiscence old
Came welling forth afresh, and still remains,
Amid the garden of my life gone by,
A fountain full of tears,—and yet of tears
With love so mingled that it seems to pour
A freshness upon feelings worn and dry,
To which still Memory turns. For 'twas an hour
That cannot pass away; an hour that woke
From childhood, childhood's hour in after days.
Now this, methought, might lead one to divine
How our past life might wake beyond the grave,
With strange, still voice, or picture-like return.
It may be suddenly that Memory's self,
With some new powers of Resurrection born,
Or as a cloud removed this fleshly veil,
Like a fresh sheet of light that passes not,
May clothe our spirits, glassing them about
With an investing flame.

Then may be seen
That weaknesses which wrap us now around,
Of time, of circumstance, of sense, of change,
Yea intellect itself, with all its powers,
Were accidents of being for awhile,
But not its essence;—things that needed were
For our probation, and put on by us,
The short-lived vestments of mortality,
As human things were by our Lord Himself—
Necessities of our small finite state
And nature, bound to time and place and thought,
Our imperfections; yet howe'er it be,
This, only this, I know that all the while
I am as one that sitteth at the door
Till I be beckon'd to come in, and pass
Into that great unknown eternity,
Which like the air compasses us all around;
And for that change of being daily wait.

Yet 'tis required that we should feed thereon,
And for our meditation much is given,
Great though our ignorance; for in this blank,
This absence as of some mysterious sense
Of which we know not, there are letters given
And syllables which, like blind children, we
May place together, and their language learn.
Nay colours too, and outlines which afford
A picture, faint indeed, yet true and sure,
Which apprehended will approach as near
To those realities which follow death
As our frail thoughts and senses can attain:
And nearest then we shall attain when most
We shall adhere unto these symbols given;
Though these expressions in themselves may be
Perchance but signs and shadows:—of a Day,
A Judgment-seat, and One that sits thereon,
Enthronèd visibly before all worlds,—
I doubt not that these words, though human words
And ta'en from human things, yet to us paint
That dread epiphany which is to be,
In circumstance exact and tangible
As our imaginings can ever reach,
While we are darken'd with this veil of death.
We see One 'neath a rainbow emerald-like
Sitting upon a throne, for ever Man
E'en as for ever God. Yea even more,
He that in Spirit saw, in Spirit wrote,
Hath thus pourtray'd,—“I saw a great white throne
And Him that sat thereon, and from His face
The earth and heaven took wings and fled away,
And were not; small and great I saw the Dead
Stand before God; the books were open laid.”
Now though of books I deem not such as men
And pen and ink have written, but thereby
Suppose some wondrous record of the past
Which would appal me, mirror-like in truth;
Some strange unfolding of the secret soul
As of a sealèd volume, in whose folds
Are written the intentions of the past
Which clothed themselves in deed—in word—in thought,—
And it may be the unhousing from this flesh
Is breaking of that seal,—yet those plain words,
Of the “white throne and Him that sits thereon,”
No doubt approach the dread reality
More near than other language could express.
Therefore I read them, and I read again,
And kneel and tremble, and in trembling pray,
And then am comforted. And sweet it is
From earthly hopes withdrawn to lose oneself
In the mysterious awfulness of God,
In whom our life lies treasured, while He works
The power of resurrection in the soul;
And then Himself would soul and body mould
Like His own glorious Body free from death,
When this vile body from her winding-sheet
All ‘re-invested with white innocence’
Shall stand before Him.

If intentions now
Write on the soul their unseen characters,
Which the bright fire that on the Judge attends
Shall then make legible, it needs must be
Our highest work to strive to read them now
By that same fire,—a fire which burns within
His Spirit and His Word; with these to pray,
For these, in these, and learn that fire of Love,
For love is lumination, and from prayer
Is the life-breath of love, the air of Heaven.

But speculations of philosophy,
Yea of diviner learning, it may be,
Do lead us further from the truth of God
In this which sets at nought all human thoughts,—
As whether that Great Day might be indeed
A thousand years, according as 'tis said,
“A thousand years with Him are but a day;”
Or whether all the past that then is weigh'd
Be but the habits of the soul, which then
Crystallized and transparent come to view.
Such curious questionings may lead abroad,
While the meek penitent on bended knees,
With saintly Andrews, on the words of God
Who trembles, reads, and prays, and praying weeps,—
Nay, in yon rural cot by sylvan slope
The sick man who hath read, or heard the words
He cannot read, and o'er them night and day
Prays—doubtless he draws nearer to the light
Which Angels have and Saints that are with God,
Than learning can attain to, or the search
Of keenest intellect which yearns to know
Rather than do the will. Thence it may be
Learned discourse and wisdom of the schools,
With all its boasted eloquence, is weak
To plant the light within that it may burn,
Yea, weaker than the unletter'd preacher's voice
Beside the village tree. As instincts lead
The fowls of heaven to their appointed food,
Insects and creeping things, beyond what art
And reasoning man could teach them, Love Divine
Knows its own way to its eternal good,
Beyond the language and the art of man;
For they are “children of the light,” the light
That lighteth every man, no learned lamp
Leads them, but humble love in duty wise.

But now—if of that greatness when reveal'd,
The First-born from the Dead upon His throne
Of glory, we can never deem aright,
So far transcending all our faculties,—
Whene'er the intellect would aught attain,
And reach to heights which are beyond all height,
And fathom depths which are beyond all depth;—
But if to know ourselves, and know our God,
To know the truth is to make low ourselves,
To littleness—to very nothingness;
Then in this self-abjection may the soul
Something bring home of truth in sinking down,
As he that does the will the doctrine knows.
Therefore I ween it is that thus our God
Both Advents hath united in our thought,
For preparation and for discipline,
The King of Glory and the King of Woe,
The Everlasting God—the Infant Child,—
Our contemplations moulding on the First,
That we may meet the Second. It is writ,
“I by the ear have heard of Thee, but lo!
Now mine eye seeth Thee, and at the sight
I do abhor myself, and speechless made
Repent in dust and ashes to the ground.”

To climb the ladder of discover'd stars,
Of suns on suns, systems on systems piled,
Will bring not to the Holy Place of God;
But to descend into a lowly heart
Made contrite, self-abased, and mourning sin,
Will find the secret place wherein God dwells,
And give to see in Christ the Incarnate Son.
'Tis going down to the dark caves of earth
That brings unto our view the starry Heavens,
Else hidden by the glare of the rude Day;
And 'tis before the Infant bowing low,
And offering up ourselves and all we have,
Kings are we made and Priests, meet to attend
The Coming from the East, when it shall be.

In comtemplations of that day unknown
We are as lost—as they who lose themselves—
Except in love of God as seen in Christ:
The “cords of man” that intertwine, inwreathe
With all our being, enter into Christ:
It is the living Christ is all in all;
To Him all Scriptures draw; unto Himself
As with a thousand ties; Him first, Him last,
Him midst, Him throughout all and within all,
Him all the way and end; on Christ to feed,
On Christ to dwell, to meditate, to pray,—
This is our light, our immortality.
To one, one only, Future points the Hand
Which beckons through all Scripture's varied page,
The Coming and the Presence of the Lord.
To “love His coming” is the “righteous crown;”
“To live is Christ;” death is to “sleep in Christ;”
And resurrection is to “see the Lord:”
Looking to Him—Him only—thus I would
Possess my soul in patience, that it may
Unruffled keep the image of my God,
And in such stillness that the noisy world
May not impede, nor drown His still small voice.

And now I deem that works, as these may be,
Of studious leisure and of sacred theme,
Which, for dispensing good, through other hands
And other eyes must pass and other hearts;
And therefore seem to lift one to the seat
Of wisdom and authoritative speech
Above one's fellows, and to set apart,
Somewhat withdrawn; these things, I fear, must be
Full of their peril, lest they uplift the soul
And by uplifting thrust it down more low,
Upraised in our own sight, made low with God.
Much too must be the peril to the soul
Which by comtemplative and letter'd lore
Would enter courts of light; for if the light
Of knowledge should increase, and fann'd by pride
Sever from charity, light without love,
The greater condemnation will it be,
And life at best laborious idleness.

For minds that feed on sacred literature
Are wont to move too fast, and so outstrip
The moral and the strengthening of the soul,
When life doth not with knowledge keep one pace,
But duty lags behind, shorn by degrees
Of lowliness and grace. Moreover add,
The mind full bent and the intenser thought,
Which any object thus pursued requires,
However pure and holy be the theme,
Leaves less of vacant leisure to the heart
For the great work of life—unceasing prayer.
Therefore, e'en more than others, such must need
The prayers of all men; for ourselves we need,
And more than others do we need to pray;
Lest seeming wise we be with fools shut out,
Miss of the wisdom unto babes reveal'd,
And thinking to gain others lose ourselves.