VIII.

And in his cell, when death drew near,
An angel in a dream brought cheer: 
And rising from the sickness drear,
He grew a priest, and now stood here. 
To the East with praise he turned,
And on his sight the angel burned. 
“I bore thee from thy craftsman’s cell,
And set thee here; I did not well,

IX.

“Vainly I left my angel-sphere,
Vain was thy dream of many a year. 
Thy voice’s praise seemed weak:  it dropped—­
Creation’s chorus stopped! 
Go back and praise again
The early way, while I remain. 
With that weak voice of our disdain,
Take up creation’s pausing strain.

X.

“Back to the cell and poor employ;
Resume the craftsman and the boy!”
Theocrite grew old at home;
A new Pope dwelt at Peter’s dome. 
One vanished as the other died: 
They sought God side by side.

Robert Browning.

Speech and silence.

1.  He who speaks honestly cares not, needs not care, though his words be preserved to remotest time.  The dishonest speaker, not he only who purposely utters falsehoods, but he who does not purposely, and with sincere heart, utter Truth, and Truth alone; who babbles he knows not what, and has clapped no bridle on his tongue, but lets it run racket, ejecting chatter and futility—­is among the most indisputable malefactors omitted, or inserted, in the Criminal Calendar.

2.  To him that will well consider it, idle speaking is precisely the beginning of all Hollowness, Halfness, Infidelity (want of Faithfulness); it is the genial atmosphere in which rank weeds of every kind attain the mastery over noble fruits in man’s life, and utterly choke them out:  one of the most crying maladies of these days, and to be testified against, and in all ways to the uttermost withstood.

3.  Wise, of a wisdom far beyond our shallow depth, was that old precept, “Watch thy tongue; out of it are the issues of Life!” Man is properly an incarnated word:  the word that he speaks is the man himself.  Were eyes put into our head, that we might see, or that we might fancy, and plausibly pretend, we had seen?  Was the tongue suspended there, that it might tell truly what we had seen, and make man the soul’s brother of man; or only that it might utter vain sounds, jargon, soul-confusing, and so divide man, as by enchanting walls of Darkness, from union with man?

4.  Thou who wearest that cunning, heaven-made organ, a Tongue, think well of this.  Speak not, I passionately entreat thee, till thy thought have silently matured itself, till thou have other than mad and mad-making noises to emit:  hold thy tongue till some meaning lie behind, to set it wagging.

5.  Consider the significance of silence:  it is boundless, never by meditating to be exhausted, unspeakably profitable to thee!  Cease that chaotic hubbub, wherein thy own soul runs to waste, to confused suicidal dislocation and stupor; out of Silence comes thy strength.  “Speech is silvern, silence is golden; speech is human, silence is divine.”