noon
You who seem to penetrate into the subtlest windings of the human heart , and to have examined nature as through a glass -- you , whose thoughts stand forth like armies marshalled in defence of truth , bold and dauntless , and without a stain upon their glittering armour ; -- are you , at your age , and with your advantages , to bury yourself amidst books and scrolls ? Do you forget that action is the grand career for men who think as you do ? Will this word-weighing and picture-writing -- the cold eulogies of pedants -- the listless praises of literary idlers , content all the yearnings of your ambition ? You were not made solely for the closet ; ` The Dreams of Pindus , and the Aonian Maids ' can not endure through the noon of manhood . You are too practical for the mere poet , and too poetical to sink into the dull tenor of a learned life . I have never seen you , yet I know you -- I read your spirit in your page ; that aspiration for something better and greater than the great and the good , which colours all your passionate revelations of yourself and others -- can not be satisfied merely by ideal images . You can not be contented , as poets and historians mostly are , by becoming great only from delineating great men , or imagining great events , or describing a great era .