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Poems of Coleridge

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge · English · Gutenberg #8208 · 293,100 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Poems of Coleridge

Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Editor: Arthur Symons


        
Release date: June 1, 2005 [eBook #8208]
                Most recently updated: December 26, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8208

Credits: Jonathan Ingram, Jerry Fairbanks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS OF COLERIDGE ***




Jonathan Ingram, Jerry Fairbanks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team




POEMS OF COLERIDGE

SELECTED AND ARRANGED
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY
ARTHUR SYMONS




CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

CHRISTABEL

KUBLA KHAN

LEWTI

THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE

LOVE

THE THREE GRAVES

DEJECTION: AN ODE

ODE TO TRANQUILLITY

FRANCE: AN ODE

FEARS IN SOLITUDE

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON

TO A GENTLEMAN (W. WORDSWORTH)

HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE

FROST AT MIDNIGHT

THE NIGHTINGALE

THE EOLIAN HARP

THE PICTURE

THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO

THE TWO FOUNTS

A DAY-DREAM

SONNET

LINES TO W. LINLEY, ESQ.

DOMESTIC PEACE

SONG FROM _ZAPOLYA_

HUNTING SONG FROM _ZAPOLYA_

WESTPHALIAN SONG

YOUTH AND AGE

WORK WITHOUT HOPE

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY

LOVE'S APPARITION

LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE

DUTY SURVIVING SELF-LOVE

LOVE'S FIRST HOPE

PHANTOM

TO NATURE

FANCY IN NUBIBUS

CONSTANCY TO AN IDEAL OBJECT

PHANTOM OR FACT?

LINES SUGGESTED BY THE LAST WORDS OF BERENGARIUS

FORBEARANCE

_SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM_

ON DONNE'S POETRY

ON A BAD SINGER

_NE PLUS ULTRA_

HUMAN LIFE

THE BUTTERFLY

THE PANG MORE SHARP THAN ALL

THE VISIONARY HOPE

THE PAINS OF SLEEP

LOVE'S BURIAL-PLACE

LOVE, A SWORD

THE KISS

NOT AT HOME

NAMES (FROM LESSING)

To LESBIA (FROM CATULLUS)

THE DEATH OF THE STARLING (FROM CATULLUS)

ON A CATARACT (FROM STOLBERG)

HYMN TO THE EARTH (FROM STOLBERG)

THE VISIT OF THE GODS (FROM SCHILLER)

TRANSLATION (FROM OTTFRIED)

THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE-HYMN

EPITAPHS ON AN INFANT

AN ODE TO THE RAIN

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION

SOMETHING CHILDISH, BUT VERY NATURAL

LINES ON A CHILD

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB

FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER

THE TWO ROUND SPACES ON THE TOMBSTONE

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS

COLOGNE

SONNETS ATTEMPTED IN THE MANNER OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

LIMBO

METRICAL FEET

THE HOMERIC HEXAMETER (FROM SCHILLER)

THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE (FROM SCHILLER)

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES (FROM MATTHISON)

To ----

EPITAPH ON A BAD MAN

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT

THE GOOD, GREAT MAN

INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN ON A HEATH

INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE

A TOMBLESS EPITAPH

EPITAPH

NOTES




INTRODUCTION

In one of Rossetti's invaluable notes on poetry, he tells us that to him
"the leading point about Coleridge's work is its human love." We may
remember Coleridge's own words:


  "To be beloved is all I need,
  And whom I love, I love indeed."


Yet love, though it is the word which he uses of himself, is not really
what he himself meant when using it, but rather an affectionate sympathy,
in which there seems to have been little element of passion. Writing to his
wife, during that first absence in Germany, whose solitude tried him so
much, he laments that there is "no one to love." "Love is the vital air of
my genius," he tells her, and adds: "I am deeply convinced that if I were
to remain a few years among objects for whom I had no affection, I should
wholly lose the powers of intellect."

With this incessant, passionless sensibility, it was not unnatural that his
thirst for friendship was stronger than his need of love; that to him
friendship was hardly distinguishable from love. Throughout all his letters
there is a series of causeless explosions of emotion, which it is hardly
possible to take seriously, but which, far from being insincere, is really,
no doubt, the dribbling overflow of choked-up feelings, a sort of moral
leakage. It might be said of Coleridge, in the phrase which he used of
Nelson, that he was "heart-starved." Tied for life to a woman with whom he
had not one essential sympathy, the whole of his nature was put out of
focus; and perhaps nothing but "the joy of grief," and the terrible and
fettering power of luxuriating over his own sorrows, and tracing them to
first principles, outside himself or in the depths of his sub-
consciousness, gave him the courage to support that long, everpresent
divorce.

Both for his good and evil, he had never been able to endure emotion
without either diluting or intensifying it with thought, and with always
self-conscious thought. He uses identically the same words in writing his
last, deeply moved letter to Mary Evans, and in relating the matter to
Southey. He cannot get away from words; coming as near to sincerity as he
can, words are always between him and his emotion. Hence his over-emphasis,
his rhetoric of humility. In 1794 he writes to his brother George: "Mine
eyes gush out with tears, my heart is sick and languid with the weight of
unmerited kindness." Nine days later he writes to his brother James: "My
conduct towards you, and towards my other brothers, has displayed a strange
combination of madness, ingratitude, and dishonesty. But you forgive me.
May my Maker forgive me! May the time arrive when I shall have forgiven
myself!" Here we see both what he calls his "gangrened sensibility" and a
complete abandonment to the feelings of the moment. It is always a self-
conscious abandonment, during which he watches himself with approval, and
seems to be saying: "Now that is truly 'feeling'!" He can never concentrate
himself on any emotion; he swims about in floods of his own tears. With so
little sense of reality in anything, he has no sense of the reality of
direct emotion, but is preoccupied, from the moment of the first shock, in
exploring it for its universal principle, and then nourishes it almost in
triumph at what he has discovered. This is not insincerity; it is the
metaphysical, analytical, and parenthetic mind in action. "I have
endeavoured to feel what I ought to feel," he once significantly writes.

Coleridge had many friends, to some of whom, as to Lamb, his friendship was
the most priceless thing in life; but the friendship which meant most to
him, not only as a man, but as a poet, was the friendship with Wordsworth
and with Dorothy Wordsworth. "There is a sense of the word Love," he wrote
to Wordsworth in 1812, "in which I never felt it but to you and one of your
household." After his quarrel in that year he has "an agony of weeping."
"After fifteen years of such religious, almost superstitious idolatry and
self-sacrifice!" he laments. Now it was during his first, daily
companionship with the Wordsworths that he wrote almost all his greatest
work. "The Ancient Mariner" and "Christabel" were both written in a kind of
rivalry with Wordsworth; and the "Ode on Dejection" was written after four
months' absence from him, in the first glow and encouragement of a return
to that one inspiring comradeship. Wordsworth was the only poet among his
friends whom he wholly admired, and Wordsworth was more exclusively a poet,
more wholly absorbed in thinking poetry and thinking about poetry, and in a
thoroughly practical way, than almost any poet who has ever lived. It was
not only for his solace in life that Coleridge required sympathy; he needed
the galvanizing of continual intercourse with a poet, and with one to whom
poetry was the only thing of importance. Coleridge, when he was by himself,
was never sure of this; there was his _magnum opus_, the revelation of
all philosophy; and he sometimes has doubts of the worth of his own poetry.
Had Coleridge been able to live uninterruptedly in the company of the
Wordsworths, even with the unsympathetic wife at home, the opium in the
cupboard, and the _magnum opus_ on the desk, I am convinced that we
should have had for our reading to-day all those poems which went down with
him into silence.

What Coleridge lacked was what theologians call a "saving belief" in
Christianity, or else a strenuous intellectual immorality. He imagined
himself to believe in Christianity, but his belief never realized itself in
effective action, either in the mind or in conduct, while it frequently
clogged his energies by weak scruples and restrictions which were but so
many internal irritations. He calls upon the religion which he has never
firmly apprehended to support him under some misfortune of his own making;
it does not support him, but he finds excuses for his weakness in what seem
to him its promises of help. Coleridge was not strong enough to be a
Christian, and he was not strong enough to rely on the impulses of his own
nature, and to turn his failings into a very actual kind of success. When
Blake said, "If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise,"
he expressed a profound truth which Nietzsche and others have done little
more than amplify. There is nothing so hopeless as inert or inactive
virtue: it is a form of life grown putrid, and it turns into poisonous,
decaying matter in the soul. If Coleridge had been more callous towards
what he felt to be his duties, if he had not merely neglected them, as he
did, but justified himself for neglecting them, on any ground of
intellectual or physical necessity, or if he had merely let them slide
without thought or regret, he would have been more complete, more
effectual, as a man, and he might have achieved more finished work as an
artist.

To Coleridge there was as much difficulty in belief as in action, for
belief is itself an action of the mind. He was always anxious to believe
anything that would carry him beyond the limits of time and space, but it
was not often that he could give more than a speculative assent to even the
most improbable of creeds. Always seeking fixity, his mind was too fluid
for any anchor to hold in it. He drifted from speculation to speculation,
often seeming to forget his aim by the way, in almost the collector's
delight over the curiosities he had found in passing. On one page of his
letters he writes earnestly to the atheist Thelwall in defence of
Christianity; on another page we find him saying, "My Spinosism (if
Spinosism it be, and i' faith 'tis very like it)"; and then comes the
solemn assurance: "I am a Berkleyan." Southey, in his rough,
uncomprehending way, writes: "Hartley was ousted by Berkeley, Berkeley by
Spinoza, and Spinoza by Plato; when last I saw him Jacob Behmen had some
chance of coming in. The truth is that he plays with systems"; so it seemed
to Southey, who could see no better. To Coleridge all systems were of
importance, because in every system there was its own measure of truth. He
was always setting his mind to think about itself, and felt that he worked
both hard and well if he had gained a clearer glimpse into that dark
cavern. "Yet I have not been altogether idle," he writes in December, 180O,
"having in my own conceit gained great light into several parts of the
human mind which have hitherto remained either wholly unexplained or most
falsely explained." In March, 1801, he declares that he has "completely
extricated the notions of time and space." "This," he says, "I have
_done_; but I trust that I am about to do more--namely, that I shall
be able to evolve all the five senses, and to state their growth and the
causes of their difference, and in this evolvement to solve the process of
life and consciousness." He hopes that before his thirtieth year he will
"thoroughly understand the whole of Nature's works." "My opinion is this,"
he says, defining one part at least of his way of approach to truth, "that
deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep feeling, and that all
truth is a species of revelation." On the other hand, he assures us,
speaking of that _magnum opus_ which weighed upon him and supported
him to the end of his life, "the very object throughout from the first page
to the last [is] to reconcile the dictates of common sense with the
conclusions of scientific reasoning."

This _magnum opus_, "a work which should contain all knowledge and
proclaim all philosophy, had," says Mr. Ernest Coleridge, "been Coleridge's
dream from the beginning." Only a few months before his death, we find him
writing to John Sterling: "Many a fond dream have I amused myself with, of
your residing near me, or in the same house, and of preparing, with your
and Mr. Green's assistance, my whole system for the press, as far as it
exists in any _systematic_ form; that is, beginning with the
Propyleum, On the Power and Use of Words, comprising Logic, as the Canons
of _Conclusion_, as the criterion of _Premises_, and lastly as
the discipline and evolution of Ideas (and then the Methodus et Epochee, or
the Disquisition on God, Nature, and Man), the two first grand divisions of
which, from the Ens super Ens to the _Fall_, or from God
to Hades, and then from Chaos to the commencement of living organization,
containing the whole of the Dynamic Philosophy, and the deduction of the
Powers and Forces, are complete." Twenty years earlier, he had written to
Daniel Stuart that he was keeping his morning hours sacred to his "most
important Work, which is printing at Bristol," as he imagined. It was then
to be called "Christianity, the one true Philosophy, or Five Treatises on
the Logos, or Communicative Intelligence, natural, human, and divine." Of
this vast work only fragments remain, mostly unpublished: two large quarto
volumes on logic, a volume intended as an introduction, a commentary on the
Gospels and some of the Epistles, together with "innumerable fragments of
metaphysical and theological speculation." But out of those fragments no
system was ever to be constructed, though a fervent disciple, J. H. Green,
devoted twenty-eight years to the attempt. "Christabel" unfinished, the
_magnum opus_ unachieved: both were but parallel symptoms of a mind
"thought-bewildered" to the end, and bewildered by excess of light and by
crowding energies always in conflict, always in escape.

Coleridge's search, throughout his life, was after the absolute, an
absolute not only in thought but in all human relations, in love,
friendship, faith in man, faith in God, faith in beauty; and while it was
this profound dissatisfaction with less than the perfect form of every art,
passion, thought, or circumstance, that set him adrift in life, making him
seem untrue to duty, conviction, and himself, it was this also that formed
in him the double existence of the poet and the philosopher, each
supplementing and interpenetrating the other. The poet and the philosopher
are but two aspects of one reality; or rather, the poetic and the
philosophic attitudes are but two ways of seeing. The poet who is not also
a philosopher is like a flower without a root. Both seek the same
infinitude; one apprehending the idea, the other the image. One seeks truth
for its beauty; the other finds beauty, an abstract, intellectual beauty,
in the innermost home of truth. Poetry and metaphysics are alike a
disengaging, for different ends, of the absolute element in things.

In Coleridge, metaphysics joined with an unbounded imagination, in equal
flight from reality, from the notions of time and space. Each was an equal
denial of the reality of what we call real things; the one experimental,
searching, reasoning; the other a "shaping spirit of imagination," an
embodying force. His sight was always straining into the darkness; and he
has himself noted that from earliest childhood his "mind was habituated to
the Vast." "I never regarded my senses," he says, "as the criteria of my
belief"; and "those who have been led to the same truths step by step,
through the constant testimony of their senses, seem to want a sense which
I possess." To Coleridge only mind existed, an eternal and an eternally
active thought; and it was as a corollary to his philosophical conception
of the universe that he set his mind to a conscious rebuilding of the world
in space. His magic, that which makes his poetry, was but the final release
in art of a winged thought fluttering helplessly among speculations and
theories; it was the song of release.

De Quincey has said of Coleridge: "I believe it to be notorious that he
first began the use of opium, not as a relief from any bodily pains or
nervous irritations--for his constitution was strong and excellent--but as
a source of luxurious sensations." Hartley Coleridge, in the biographical
supplement to the "Biographia Literaria," replies with what we now know to
be truth: "If my Father sought more from opium than the mere absence of
pain, I feel assured that it was not luxurious sensations or the glowing
phantasmagoria of passive dreams; but that the power of the medicine might
keep down the agitations of his nervous system, like a strong hand grasping
the strings of some shattered lyre." In 1795. that is, at the age of
twenty-three, we find him taking laudanum; in 1796, he is taking it in
large doses; by the late spring of 1801 he is under the "fearful slavery,"
as he was to call it, of opium. "My sole sensuality," he says of this time,
"was not to be in pain." In a terrible letter addressed to Joseph Cottle in
1814 he declares that he was "seduced to the _accursed_ habit
ignorantly"; and he describes "the direful moment, when my pulse began to
fluctuate, my heart to palpitate, and such a dreadful falling abroad, as it
were, of my whole frame, such intolerable restlessness, and incipient
bewilderment ... for my case is a species of madness, only that it is a
derangement, an utter impotence of the volition, and not of the
intellectual faculties." And, throughout, it is always the pains, never the
pleasures, of opium that he registers.

Opium took hold of him by what was inert in his animal nature, and not by
any active sensuality. His imagination required no wings, but rather
fetters; and it is evident that opium was more often a sedative than a spur
to his senses.

The effect of opium on the normal man is to bring him into something like
the state in which Coleridge habitually lived. The world was always a
sufficiently unreal thing to him, facts more than remote enough,
consequences unrelated to their causes; he lived in a mist, and opium
thickened the mist to a dense yellow fog. Opium might have helped to make
Southey a poet; it left Coleridge the prisoner of a cobweb-net of dreams.
What he wanted was some astringent force in things, to tighten, not to
loosen, the always expanding and uncontrollable limits of his mind. Opium
did but confirm what the natural habits of his constitution had bred in
him: an overwhelming indolence, out of which the energies that still arose
intermittently were no longer flames, but the escaping ghosts of flame,
mere black smoke.

At twenty-four, in a disinterested description of himself for the benefit
of a friend whom he had not yet met, he declares, "the walk of the whole
man indicates _indolence capable of energies_." It was that walk which
Carlyle afterwards described, unable to keep to either side of the garden-
path. "The moral obligation is to me so very strong a stimulant," Coleridge
writes to Crabb Robinson, "that in nine cases out of ten it acts as a
narcotic. The blow that should rouse, _stuns_ me." He plays another
variation on the ingenious theme in a letter to his brother: "Anxieties
that stimulate others infuse an additional narcotic into my mind.... Like
some poor labourer, whose night's sleep has but imperfectly refreshed his
overwearied frame, I have sate in drowsy uneasiness, and doing nothing have
thought what a deal I have to do." His ideal, which he expressed in 1797 in
a letter to Thelwall, and, in 1813, almost word for word, in a poem called"
The Night-Scene," was, "like the Indian Vishnu, to float about along an
infinite ocean cradled in the flower of the Lotus, and wake once in a
million years for a few minutes just to know that I was going to sleep a
million years more." Observe the effect of the desire for the absolute,
reinforced by constitutional indolence, and only waiting for the
illuminating excuse of opium.

From these languors, and from their consequences, Coleridge found relief in
conversation, for which he was always ready, while he was far from always
ready for the more precise mental exertion of writing. "Oh, how I wish to
be talking, not writing," he cries in a letter to Southey in 1803, "for my
mind is so full, that my thoughts stifle and jam each other." And, in 1816,
in his first letter to Gillman, he writes, more significantly, "The
stimulus of conversation suspends the terror that haunts my mind; but when
I am alone, the horrors that I have suffered from laudanum, the
degradation, the blighted utility, almost overwhelm me." It was along one
avenue of this continual escape from himself that Coleridge found himself
driven (anywhere, away from action) towards what grew to be the main waste
of his life. Hartley Coleridge, in the preface to "Table-Talk," has told us
eloquently how, "throughout a long-drawn summer's day, would this man talk
to you in low, equable, but clear and musical tones, concerning things
human and divine"; we know that Carlyle found him "unprofitable, even
tedious," and wished "to worship him, and toss him in a blanket"; and we
have the vivid reporting of Keats, who tells us that, on his one meeting
with Coleridge, "I walked with him, at his alderman-after-dinner pace, for
near two miles, I suppose. In those two miles he broached a thousand
things. Let me see if I can give you a list--nightingales--poetry--on
poetical sensation--metaphysics--different genera and species of dreams--
nightmare--a dream accompanied with a sense of touch--single and double
touch--a dream related--first and second consciousness--the difference
explained between will and volition--so say metaphysicians from a want of
smoking the second consciousness--monsters--the Kraken--mermaids--Southey
believes in them--Southey's belief too much diluted--a ghost story--Good-
morning--I heard his voice as he came towards me--I heard it as he moved
away--I had heard it all the interval--if it may be called so." It may be
that we have had no more wonderful talker, and, no doubt, the talk had its
reverential listeners, its disciples; but to cultivate or permit disciples
is itself a kind of waste, a kind of weakness; it requires a very fixed and
energetic indolence to become, as Coleridge became, a vocal utterance,
talking for talking's sake.

But beside talking, there was lecturing, with Coleridge a scarcely
different form of talk; and it is to this consequence of a readiness to
speak and a reluctance to write that we owe much of his finest criticism,
in the imperfectly recorded "Lectures on Shakespeare." Coleridge as a
critic is not easily to be summed up. What may first surprise us, when we
begin to look into his critical opinions, is the uncertainty of his
judgments in regard to his own work, and to the work of his friends; the
curious bias which a feeling or an idea, affection or a philosophical
theory, could give to his mind. His admiration for Southey, his
consideration for Sotheby, perhaps in a less degree his unconquerable
esteem for Bowles, together with something very like adulation of
Wordsworth, are all instances of a certain loss of the sense of proportion.
He has left us no penetrating criticisms of Byron, of Shelley, or of Keats;
and in a very interesting letter about Blake, written in 1818, he is unable
to take the poems merely as poems, and chooses among them with a scrupulous
care "not for the want of innocence in the poem, but from the too probable
want of it in many readers."

Lamb, concerned only with individual things, looks straight at them, not
through them, seeing them implacably. His notes to the selections from the
Elizabethan dramatists are the surest criticisms that we have in English;
they go to the roots. Coleridge's critical power was wholly exercised upon
elements and first principles; Lamb showed an infinitely keener sense of
detail, of the parts of the whole. Lamb was unerring on definite points,
and could lay his finger on flaws in Coleridge's work that were invisible
to Coleridge; who, however, was unerring in his broad distinctions, in the
philosophy of his art.

"The ultimate end of criticism," said Coleridge, "is much more to establish
the principles of writing than to furnish rules how to pass judgment on
what has been written by others." And for this task he had an incomparable
foundation: imagination, insight, logic, learning, almost every critical
quality united in one; and he was a poet who allowed himself to be a
critic. Those pages of the "Biographia Literaria," in which he defines and
distinguishes between imagination and fancy, the researches into the
abstract entities of poetry in the course of an examination of Wordsworth's
theories and of the popular objections to them, all that we have of the
lectures on Shakespeare, into which he put an illuminating idolatry,
together with notes and jottings preserved in the "Table-Talk," "Anima
Poetæ," the "Literary Remains," and on the margins of countless books,
contain the most fundamental criticism of literature that has ever been
attempted, fragmentary as the attempt remains. "There is not a man in
England," said Coleridge, with truth, "whose thoughts, images, words, and
erudition have been published in larger quantities than _mine_; though
I must admit, not _by_, nor _for_, myself." He claimed, and
rightly, as his invention, a "science of reasoning and judging concerning
the productions of literature, the characters and measures of public men,
and the events of nations, by a systematic subsumption of them, under
principles deduced from the nature of man," which, as he says, was unknown
before the year 1795. He is the one philosophical critic who is also a
poet, and thus he is the one critic who instinctively knows his way through
all the intricacies of the creative mind.

Most of his best criticism circles around Shakespeare; and he took
Shakespeare almost frankly in the place of Nature, or of poetry. He
affirms, "Shakespeare knew the human mind, and its most minute and intimate
workings, and he never introduces a word, or a thought, in vain or out of
place." This granted (and to Coleridge it is essential that it should be
granted, for in less than the infinite he cannot find space in which to use
his wings freely) he has only to choose and define, to discover and to
illuminate. In the "myriad-minded man," in his "oceanic mind," he finds all
the material that he needs for the making of a complete aesthetics. Nothing
with Coleridge ever came to completion; but we have only to turn over the
pages about Shakespeare, to come upon fragments worth more than anyone
else's finished work. I find the whole secret of Shakespeare's way of
writing in these sentences: "Shakespeare's intellectual action is wholly
unlike that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Fletcher. The latter see the
totality of a sentence or passage, and then project it entire. Shakespeare
goes on creating, and evolving B out of A, and C out of B, and so on, just
as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum of its own body, and seems
forever twisting and untwisting its own strength. "And here are a few
axioms: 'The grandest efforts of poetry are where the imagination is called
forth, not to produce a distinct form, but a strong working of the mind';
or, in other words, "The power of poetry is, by a single word perhaps, to
instill that energy into the mind which compels the imagination to produce
the picture." "Poetry is the identity of all other knowledges," "the
blossom and fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human
passions, emotions, language." "Verse is in itself a music, and the natural
symbol of that union of passion with thought and pleasure, which
constitutes the essence of all poetry "; "a more than usual state of
emotion, with more than usual order," as he has elsewhere defined it. And,
in one of his spoken counsels, he says: "I wish our clever young poets
would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose--
words in their best order; poetry--the best words in the best order."

Unlike most creative critics, or most critics who were creative artists in
another medium, Coleridge, when he was writing criticism, wrote it wholly
for its own sake, almost as if it were a science. His prose is rarely of
the finest quality as prose writing. Here and there he can strike out a
phrase at red-heat, as when he christens Shakespeare "the one Proteus of
the fire and flood"; or he can elaborate subtly, as when he notes the
judgment of Shakespeare, observable in every scene of the "Tempest," "still
preparing, still inviting, and still gratifying, like a finished piece of
music"; or he can strike us with the wit of the pure intellect, as when he
condemns certain work for being "as trivial in thought and yet enigmatic in
expression, as if Echo and the Sphinx had laid their heads together to
construct it." But for the most part it is a kind of thinking aloud, and
the form is wholly lost in the pursuit of ideas. With his love for the
absolute, why is it that he does not seek after an absolute in words
considered as style, as well as in words considered as the expression of
thought? In his finest verse Coleridge has the finest style perhaps in
English; but his prose is never quite reduced to order from its tumultuous
amplitude or its snake-like involution. Is it that he values it only as a
medium, not as an art? His art is verse, and this he dreads, because of its
too mortal closeness to his heart; the prose is a means to an end, not an
end in itself.

The poetry of Coleridge, though it is closely interwoven with the
circumstances of his life, is rarely made directly out of those
circumstances. To some extent this is no doubt explained by a fact to which
he often refers in his letters, and which, in his own opinion, hindered him
not only from writing about himself in verse, but from writing verse at
all. "As to myself," he writes in 1802, "all my poetic genius ... is gone,"
and he attributes it "to my long and exceedingly severe metaphysical
investigations, and these partly to ill-health, and partly to private
afflictions which rendered any subjects, immediately connected with
feeling, a source of pain and disquiet to me." In 1818 he writes: "Poetry
is out of the question. The attempt would only hurry me into that sphere of
acute feelings from which abstruse research, the mother of self-oblivion,
presents an asylum." But theory worked with a natural tendency in keeping
him for the most part away from any attempt to put his personal emotions
into verse. "A sound promise of genius," he considered, "is the choice of
subjects very remote from the private interests and circumstances of the
writer himself." With only a few exceptions, the wholly personal poems,
those actually written under a shock of emotion, are vague, generalized,
turned into a kind of literature. The success of such a poem as the almost
distressingly personal "Ode on Dejection" comes from the fact that
Coleridge has been able to project his personal feeling into an outward
image, which becomes to him the type of dejection; he can look at it as at
one of his dreams which become things; he can sympathize with it as he
could never sympathize with his own undeserving self. And thus one stanza,
perhaps the finest as poetry, becomes the biography of his soul:


  "There was a time when, though my path was rough,
    This joy within me dallied with distress,
  And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
    Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
  For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
  And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine
  But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
  Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
      But oh! each visitation
  Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
    My shaping spirit of Imagination.
  For not to think of what I needs must feel,
    But to be still and patient all I can,
  And haply by abstruse research to steal
    From my own nature all the natural man--
    This was my sole resource, my only plan:
  Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
  And now is almost grown the habit of my soul."


Elsewhere, in personal poems like "Frost at Midnight," and "Fears in
Solitude," all the value of the poem comes from the delicate sensations of
natural things which mean so much more to us, whether or not they did to
him, than the strictly personal part of the matter. You feel that there he
is only using the quite awake part of himself, which is not the essential
one. He requires, first of all, to be disinterested, or at least not
overcome by emotion; to be without passion but that of abstract beauty, in
Nature, or in idea; and then to sink into a quiet lucid sleep, in which his
genius came to him like some attendant spirit.

In the life and art of Coleridge, the hours of sleep seem to have been
almost more important than the waking hours. "My dreams became the
substance of my life," he writes, just after the composition of that
terrible poem on "The Pains of Sleep," which is at once an outcry of agony,
and a yet more disturbing vision of the sufferer with his fingers on his
own pulse, his eyes fixed on his own hardly awakened eyes in the mirror. In
an earlier letter, written at a time when he is trying to solve the problem
of the five senses, he notes: "The sleep which I have is made up of ideas
so connected, and so little different from the operations of reason, that
it does not afford me the due refreshment." To Coleridge, with the help of
opium, hardly required, indeed, there was no conscious division between day
and night, between not only dreams and intuitions, but dreams and pure
reason. And we find him, in almost all his great poems, frankly taking not
only his substance but his manner from dreams, as he dramatizes them after
a logic and a passion of their own. His technique is the transposition into
his waking hours of the unconscious technique of dreams. It is a kind of
verified inspiration, something which came and went, and was as little to
be relied upon as the inspiration itself. On one side it was an exact
science, but on the other a heavenly visitation. Count and balance
syllables, work out an addition of the feet in the verse by the foot-rule,
and you will seem to have traced every miracle back to its root in a
natural product. Only, something, that is, everything, will have escaped
you. As well dissect a corpse to find out the principle of life. That
elusive something, that spirit, will be what distinguishes Coleridge's
finest verse from the verse of, well, perhaps of every conscious artist in
our language. For it is not, as in Blake, literally unconscious, and
wavering on every breath of that unseen wind on which it floats to us; it
is faultless; it is itself the wind which directs it, it steers its way on
the wind, like a seagull poised between sky and sea, and turning on its
wings as upon shifted sails.

This inspiration comes upon Coleridge suddenly, without warning, in the
first uncertain sketch of "Lewti," written at twenty-two; and then it
leaves him, without warning, until the great year 1797, three years later,
when "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner" are begun. Before and after,
Coleridge is seen trying to write like Bowles, like Wordsworth, like
Southey, perhaps, to attain "that impetuosity of transition and that
precipitancy of fancy and feeling, which are the _essential_ qualities
of the sublimer Ode," and which he fondly fancies that he has attained in
the "Ode on the Departing Year," with its one good line, taken out of his
note-book. But here, in "Lewti," he has his style, his lucid and liquid
melody, his imagery of moving light and the faintly veiled transparency of
air, his vague, wildly romantic subject matter, coming from no one knows
where, meaning one hardly knows what; but already a magic, an incantation.
"Lewti" is a sort of preliminary study for "Kubla Khan"; it, too, has all
the imagery of a dream, with a breathlessness and awed hush, as of one not
yet accustomed to be at home in dreams.

"Kubla Khan," which was literally composed in sleep, comes nearer than any
other existing poem to that ideal of lyric poetry which has only lately
been systematized by theorists like Mallarmé. It has just enough meaning to
give it bodily existence; otherwise it would be disembodied music. It seems
to hover in the air, like one of the island enchantments of Prospero. It is
music not made with hands, and the words seem, as they literally were,
remembered. "All the images," said Coleridge, "rose up before me as
_things_, with a parallel production of the correspondent
expressions." Lamb, who tells us how Coleridge repeated it "so enchantingly
that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlour
when he says or sings it to me," doubted whether it would "bear daylight."
It seemed to him that such witchcraft could hardly outlast the night. It
has outlasted the century, and may still be used as a touchstone; it will
determine the poetic value of any lyric poem which you place beside it.
Take as many poems as you please, and let them have all the merits you
please, their ultimate merit as poetry will lie in the degree of their
approach to the exact, unconscious, inevitable balance of qualities in the
poetic art of "Kubla Khan."

In "The Ancient Mariner," which it seems probable was composed before, and
not after "Kubla Khan," as Coleridge's date would have us suppose, a new
supernaturalism comes into poetry, which, for the first time, accepted the
whole responsibility of dreams. The impossible, frankly accepted, with its
own strict, inverted logic; the creation of a new atmosphere, outside the
known world, which becomes as real as the air about us, and yet never loses
its strangeness; the shiver that comes to us, as it came to the wedding-
guest, from the simple good faith of the teller; here is a whole new
creation, in subject, mood, and technique. Here, as in "Kubla Khan,"
Coleridge saw the images "as _things_"; only a mind so overshadowed by
dreams, and so easily able to carry on his sleep awake, could have done so;
and, with such a mind, "that willing suspension of disbelief for a moment,
which constitutes poetic faith," was literally forced upon him. "The
excellence aimed at," says Coleridge, "was to consist in the interesting of
the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions, as would naturally
accompany such situations," those produced by supernatural agency,
"supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human
being who, from whatever sense of delusion, has at any time believed
himself under supernatural agency." To Coleridge, whatever appealed vitally
to his imagination was real; and he defended his belief philosophically,
disbelieving from conviction in that sharp marking off of real from
imaginary which is part of the ordinary attitude of man in the presence of
mystery.

It must not be forgotten that Coleridge is never fantastic. The fantastic
is a playing with the imagination, and Coleridge respects it. His intellect
goes always easily as far as his imagination will carry it, and does not
stop by the way to play tricks upon its bearer. Hence the conviction which
he brings with him when he tells us the impossible. And then his style, in
its ardent and luminous simplicity, flexible to every bend of the spirit
which it clothes with flesh, helps him in the idiomatic translation of
dreams. The visions of Swedenborg are literal translations of the
imagination, and need to be retranslated. Coleridge is equally faithful to
the thing seen and to the laws of that new world into which he has
transposed it.

"The Ancient Mariner" is the most sustained piece of imagination in the
whole of English poetry; and it has almost every definable merit of
imaginative narrative. It is the only poem I know which is all point and
yet all poetry; because, I suppose, the point is really a point of mystery.
It is full of simple, daily emotion, transported, by an awful power of
sight, to which the limits of reality are no barrier, into an unknown sea
and air; it is realized throughout the whole of its ghastly and marvellous
happenings; and there is in the narrative an ease, a buoyancy almost, which
I can only compare with the music of Mozart, extracting its sweetness from
the stuff of tragedy; it presents to us the utmost physical and spiritual
horror, not only without disgust, but with an alluring beauty. But in
"Christabel," in the first part especially, we find a quality which goes
almost beyond these definable merits. There is in it a literal spell, not
acting along any logical lines, not attacking the nerves, not terrifying,
not intoxicating, but like a slow, enveloping mist, which blots out the
real world, and leaves us unchilled by any "airs from heaven or blasts from
hell," but in the native air of some middle region. In these two or three
brief hours of his power out of a lifetime, Coleridge is literally a
wizard. People have wanted to know what "Christabel" means, and how it was
to have ended, and whether Geraldine was a vampire (as I am inclined to
think) or had eyes in her breasts (as Shelley thought). They have wondered
that a poem so transparent in every line should be, as a whole, the most
enigmatical in English. But does it matter very much whether "Christabel"
means this or that, and whether Coleridge himself knew, as he said, how it
was to end, or whether, as Wordsworth declared, he had never decided? It
seems to me that Coleridge was fundamentally right when he said of the
"Ancient Mariner," "It ought to have had no more moral than the Arabian
Nights' tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by the side of a
well, and throwing the shells aside, and lo! a genie starts up, and says he
_must_ kill the aforesaid merchant, because one of the date-shells
had, it seems, put out the eye of the genie's son." The "Ancient Mariner,"
if we take its moral meaning too seriously, comes near to being an
allegory. "Christabel," as it stands, is a piece of pure witchcraft,
needing no further explanation than the fact of its existence.

Rossetti called Coleridge the Turner of poets, and indeed there is in
Coleridge an aërial glitter which we find in no other poet, and in Turner
only among painters. With him colour is always melted in atmosphere, which
it shines through like fire within a crystal. It is liquid colour, the dew
on flowers, or a mist of rain in bright sunshine. His images are for the
most part derived from water, sky, the changes of weather, shadows of
things rather than things themselves, and usually mental reflections of
them. "A poet ought not to pick Nature's pocket," he said, and it is for
colour and sound, in their most delicate forms, that he goes to natural
things. He hears


                "the merry nightingale
  That crowds and hurries and precipitates
  With fast thick warble his delicious notes;"


and an ecstasy comes to him out of that natural music which is almost like
that of his own imagination. Only music or strange effects of light can
carry him swiftly enough out of himself, in the presence of visible or
audible things, for that really poetic ecstasy. Then all his languor drops
off from him, like a clogging garment.

The first personal merit which appears in his almost wholly valueless early
work is a sense of colour. In a poem written at twenty-one he sees Fancy


  "Bathed in rich amber-glowing floods of light,"


and next year the same colour reappears, more expressively, in a cloud,


              "wholly bright,
  With a rich and amber light."


The two women in "The Two Graves," during a momentous pause, are found
discussing whether the rays of the sun are green or amber; a valley is


  "Tinged yellow with the rich departing light;"


seen through corn at evening,


  "The level sunshine glimmers with green light;"


and there is the carefully observed


                          "western sky
  And its peculiar tint of yellow green."


"The Ancient Mariner" is full of images of light and luminous colour in sky
and sea; Glycine's song in "Zapolya" is the most glittering poem in our
language, with a soft glitter like that of light seen through water. And he
is continually endeavouring, as later poets have done on a more deliberate
theory, to suffuse sound with colour or make colours literally a form of
music; as in an early poem


 "Where melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
  Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
  Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing."


With him, as with some of them, there is something pathological in this
sensitiveness, and in a letter written in 180O he says: "For the last month
I have been trembling on through sands and swamps of evil and bodily
grievance. My eyes have been inflamed to a degree that rendered reading
scarcely possible; and, strange as it seems, the act of mere composition,
as I lay in bed, perceptibly affected them, and my voluntary ideas were
every minute passing, more or less transformed into vivid spectra."

Side by side with this sensitiveness to colour, or interfused with it, we
find a similar, or perhaps a greater, sensitiveness to sound, Coleridge
shows a greater sensitiveness to music than any English poet except Milton.
The sonnet to Linley records his ecstatic responsiveness to music;
Purcell's music, too, which he names with Palestrina's ("some madrigals
which he heard at Rome") in the "Table-Talk." "I have the intensest delight
in music," he says there, "and can detect good from bad"; a rare thing
among poets. In one of his letters he notes: "I hear in my brain ...
sensations ... of various degrees of pain, even to a strange sort of uneasy
pleasure.... I hear in my brain, and still more in my stomach." There we
get the morbid physical basis of a sensitiveness to music which came to
mean much to him. In a note referring to "Christabel," and to the reasons
why it had never been finished, he says: "I could write as good verse now
as ever I did, if I were perfectly free from vexations, and were in the
_ad libitum_ hearing of fine music, which has a sensible effect in
harmonizing my thoughts, and in animating and, as it were, lubricating my
inventive faculty." "Christabel," more than anything of Coleridge, is
composed like music; you might set at the side of each section, especially
of the opening, _largo, vivacissimo_, and, as the general expression
signature, _tempo rubato_. I know no other verse in which the effects
of music are so precisely copied in metre. Shelley, you feel, sings like a
bird; Blake, like a child or an angel; but Coleridge certainly writes
music.

The metre of the "Ancient Mariner" is a re-reading of the familiar ballad-
metre, in which nothing of the original force, swiftness or directness is
lost, while a new subtlety, a wholly new music, has come into it. The metre
of "Christabel" is even more of an invention, and it had more immediate
consequences. The poem was begun in 1797, and not published till 1816; but
in 1801 Scott heard it recited, and in 1805 reproduced what he could of it
in "The Lay of the Last Minstrel" and the other metrical romances which, in
their turn, led the way to Byron, who himself heard "Christabel" recited in
1811. But the secret of Coleridge's instinct of melody and science of
harmony was not discovered. Such ecstasy and such collectedness, a way of
writing which seems to aim at nothing but the most precisely expressive
simplicity, and yet sets the whole brain dancing to its tune, can hardly be
indicated more exactly than in Coleridge's own words in reference to the
Italian lyrists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They, attained
their aim, he says, "by the avoidance of every word which a gentleman would
not use in dignified conversation, and of every word and phrase which none
but a learned man would use; by the studied position of words and phrases,
so that not only each part should be melodious in itself, but contribute to
the harmony of the whole, each note referring and conducing to the melody
of all the foregoing and following words of the same period or stanza; and,
lastly, with equal labour, the greater because unbetrayed, by the variation
and various harmonies of their metrical movement." These qualities we may
indeed find in many of Coleridge's songs, part Elizabethan, part eighteenth
century, in some of his infantile jingles, his exuberant comic verse (in
which, however, there are many words "which a gentleman would not use"),
and in a poem like "Love," which has suffered as much indiscriminate praise
as Raphael's Madonnas, which it resembles in technique and sentiment, and
in its exquisite perfection of commonplace, its _tour de force _of an
almost flawless girlishness. But in "Christabel" the technique has an
incomparable substance to work upon; substance at once simple and abnormal,
which Coleridge required, in order to be at his best.

It has been pointed out by the profoundest poetical critic of our time that
the perfection of Coleridge's style in poetry comes from an equal balance
of the clear, somewhat matter-of-fact qualities of the eighteenth century
with the remote, imaginative qualities of the nineteenth century. "To
please me," said Coleridge in "Table-Talk," "a poem must be either music or
sense." The eighteenth-century manner, with its sense only just coupled
with a kind of tame and wingless music, may be seen quite by itself in the
early song from "Robespierre":


  "Tell me, on what holy ground
   May domestic peace be found?"


Here there is both matter and manner, of a kind; in "The Kiss" of the same
year, with its one exquisite line,


  "The gentle violence of joy,"


there is only the liquid glitter of manner. We get the ultimate union of
eighteenth and nineteenth century qualities in "Work without Hope," and in
"Youth and Age," which took nine years to bring into its faultless ultimate
form. There is always a tendency in Coleridge to fall back on the
eighteenth-century manner, with its scrupulous exterior neatness, and its
comfortable sense of something definite said definitely, whenever the
double inspiration flags, and matter and manner do not come together. "I
cannot write without a _body of thought_," he said at a time before he
had found himself or his style; and he added: "Hence my poetry is crowded
and sweats beneath a heavy burden of ideas and imagery! It has seldom
ease." It was an unparalleled ease in the conveying of a "body of thought"
that he was finally to attain. In "Youth and Age," think how much is
actually said, and with a brevity impossible in prose; things, too, far
from easy for poetry to say gracefully, such as the image of the steamer,
or the frank reference to "this altered size"; and then see with what an
art, as of the very breathing of syllables, it passes into the most flowing
of lyric forms. Besides these few miracles of his later years, there are
many poems, such as the Flaxman group of "Love, Hope, and Patience
supporting Education," in which we get all that can be poetic in the
epigram softened by imagination, all that can be given by an ecstatic plain
thinking. The rarest magic has gone, and he knows it; philosophy remains,
and out of that resisting material he is able, now and again, to weave, in
his deftest manner, a few garlands.

ARTHUR SYMONS.





SELECTIONS FROM THE
POEMS OF COLERIDGE




THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

IN SEVEN PARTS

Facile credo, plures esse Naturas invisibiles quam visibiles in rerum
universitate. Sed horum omnium familiam quis nobis enarrabit? et gradus et
cognationes et discrimina et singulorum munera? Quid agunt? quæ loca
habitant? Harum rerum notitiam semper ambivit ingenium humanum, nunquam
attigit. Juvat, interea, non diffiteor, quandoque in animo, tanquam in
tabulâ, majoris et melioris mundi imaginem contemplari: ne mens assuefacta
hodiernæ vitæ minutiis se contrahat nimis, et tota subsidat in pusillas
cogitationes. Sed veritati interea invigilandum est, modusque servandus, ut
certa ab incertis, diem a nocte, distinguamus.--T. BURNET, _Archæol.
Phil_. p. 68.


ARGUMENT


How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country
towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the
tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things
that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own
Country.


PART I


  It is an ancient Mariner,
  And he stoppeth one of three.
  "By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
  Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

  "The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
  And I am next of kin;
  The guests are met, the feast is set:
  May'st hear the merry din."

  He holds him with his skinny hand,
  "There was a ship," quoth he.
  "Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!"
  Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

  He holds him with his glittering eye
  The Wedding-Guest stood still,
  And listens like a three years' child:
  The Mariner hath his will.

  The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
  He cannot choose but hear;
  And thus spake on that ancient man,
  The bright-eyed Mariner.

  "The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared,
  Merrily did we drop
  Below the kirk, below the hill,
  Below the lighthouse top.

  The sun came up upon the left,
  Out of the sea came he!
  And he shone bright, and on the right
  Went down into the sea.

  Higher and higher every day,
  Till over the mast at noon--"
  The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast,
  For he heard the loud bassoon.

  The bride hath paced into the hall,
  Red as a rose is she;
  Nodding their heads before her goes
  The merry minstrelsy.

  The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
  Yet he cannot choose but hear;
  And thus spake on that ancient man,
  The bright-eyed Mariner.

  "And now the Storm-blast came, and he
  Was tyrannous and strong:
  He struck with his o'ertaking wings
  And chased us south along.

  With sloping masts and dipping prow,
  As who pursued with yell and blow
  Still treads the shadow of his foe,
  And forward bends his head,
  The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
  And southward aye we fled.

  And now there came both mist and snow,
  And it grew wondrous cold:
  And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
  As green as emerald.

  And through the drifts the snowy clifts
  Did send a dismal sheen:
  Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken--
  The ice was all between.

  The ice was here, the ice was there,
  The ice was all around:
  It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
  Like noises in a swound!

  At length did cross an Albatross,
  Thorough the fog it came;
  As if it had been a Christian soul,
  We hailed it in God's name.

  It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
  And round and round it flew.
  The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
  The helmsman steered us through!

  And a good south wind sprung up behind;
  The Albatross did follow,
  And every day, for food or play,
  Came to the mariners' hollo!

  In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
  It perched for vespers nine;
  Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white,
  Glimmered the white moon-shine."

  "God save thee, ancient Mariner!
  From the fiends, that plague thee thus!--
  Why look'st thou so?"--With my cross-bow
  I shot the Albatross.

       *     *     *     *     *

PART II


  The Sun now rose upon the right:
  Out of the sea came he,
  Still hid in mist, and on the left
  Went down into the sea.

  And the good south wind still blew behind,
  But no sweet bird did follow,
  Nor any day for food or play
  Came to the mariners' hollo!

  And I had done a hellish thing,
  And it would work 'em woe:
  For all averred, I had killed the bird
  That made the breeze to blow.
  Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
  That made the breeze to blow!

  Nor, dim nor red, like God's own head,
  The glorious Sun uprist:
  Then all averred, I had killed the bird
  That brought the fog and mist.
  'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
  That bring the fog and mist.

  The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
  The furrow followed free;
  We were the first that ever burst
  Into that silent sea.

  Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down,
  'Twas sad as sad could be;
  And we did speak only to break
  The silence of the sea!

  All in a hot and copper sky,
  The bloody Sun, at noon,
  Right up above the mast did stand,
  No bigger than the Moon.

  Day after day, day after day,
  We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
  As idle as a painted ship
  Upon a painted ocean.

  Water, water, every where,
  And all the boards did shrink;
  Water, water, every where
  Nor any drop to drink.

  The very deep did rot: O Christ!
  That ever this should be!
  Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
  Upon the slimy sea.

  About, about, in reel and rout
  The death-fires danced at night;
  The water, like a witch's oils,
  Burnt green, and blue and white.

  And some in dreams assured were ,
  Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
  Nine fathom deep he had followed us
  From the land of mist and snow.

  And every tongue, through utter drought,
  Was withered at the root;
  We could not speak, no more than if
  We had been choked with soot.

  Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
  Had I from old and young!
  Instead of the cross, the Albatross
  About my neck was hung.


PART III


  There passed a weary time. Each throat
  Was parched, and glazed each eye.
  A weary time! a weary time!
  How glazed each weary eye,
  When looking westward, I beheld
  A something in the sky.

  At first it seemed a little speck,
  And then it seemed a mist;
  It moved and moved, and took at last
  A certain shape, I wist.

  A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist!
  And still it neared and neared:
  As if it dodged a water-sprite,
  It plunged and tacked and veered.

  With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
  We could nor laugh nor wail;
  Through utter drought all dumb we stood!
  I bit my arm, I sucked the blood,
  And cried, A sail! a sail!

  With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
  Agape they heard me call:
  Gramercy! they for joy did grin,
  And all at once their breath drew in,
  As they were drinking all.

  See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more!
  Hither to work us weal;
  Without a breeze, without a tide,
  She steadies with upright keel!

  The western wave was all a-flame,
  The day was well nigh done!
  Almost upon the western wave
  Rested the broad bright Sun;
  When that strange shape drove suddenly
  Betwixt us and the Sun.

  And straight the Sun was flecked with bars,
  (Heaven's Mother send us grace!)
  As if through a dungeon-grate he peered
  With broad and burning face.

  Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud)
  How fast she nears and nears!
  Are those her sails that glance in the Sun,
  Like restless gossameres?

  Are those her ribs through which the Sun
  Did peer, as through a grate?
  And is that Woman all her crew?
  Is that a Death? and are there two?
  Is Death that Woman's mate?

  Her lips were red, her looks were free,
  Her locks were yellow as gold:
  Her skin was as white as leprosy,
  The Night-mare Life-in-Death was she,
  Who thicks man's blood with cold.

  The naked hulk alongside came,
  And the twain were casting dice;
  "The game is done! I've won! I've won!"
  Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

  The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
  At one stride comes the dark;
  With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea,
  Off shot the spectre-bark.

  We listened and looked sideways up!
  Fear at my heart, as at a cup,
  My life-blood seemed to sip!
  The stars were dim, and thick the night,
  The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white;
  From the sails the dew did drip--
  Till clomb above the eastern bar
  The horned Moon, with one bright star
  Within the nether tip.

  One after one, by the star-dogged Moon,
  Too quick for groan or sigh,
  Each turned his face with a ghastly pang,
  And cursed me with his eye.

  Four times fifty living men,
  (And I heard nor sigh nor groan)
  With heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
  They dropped down one by one.

  The souls did from their bodies fly,--
  They fled to bliss or woe!
  And every soul, it passed me by,
  Like the whizz of my cross-bow!


PART IV


  "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!
  I fear thy skinny hand!
  And thou art long, and lank, and brown,
  As is the ribbed sea-sand.[1]

  I fear thee and thy glittering eye,
  And thy skinny hand, so brown."--
  Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest!
  This body dropt not down.

  Alone, alone, all, all alone,
  Alone on a wide wide sea!
  And never a saint took pity on
  My soul in agony.

  The many men, so beautiful!
  And they all dead did lie:
  And a thousand thousand slimy things
  Lived on; and so did I.

  I looked upon the rotting sea,
  And drew my eyes away;
  I looked upon the rotting deck,
  And there the dead men lay.

  I looked to heaven, and tried to pray;
  But or ever a prayer had gusht,
  A wicked whisper came, and made
  My heart as dry as dust.

  I closed my lids, and kept them close,
  And the balls like pulses beat;
  For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky,
  Lay like a load on my weary eye,
  And the dead were at my feet.

  The cold sweat melted from their limbs,
  Nor rot nor reek did they:
  The look with which they looked on me
  Had never passed away.

  An orphan's curse would drag to hell
  A spirit from on high;
  But oh! more horrible than that
  Is a curse in a dead man's eye!
  Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
  And yet I could not die.

  The moving Moon went up the sky,
  And no where did abide:
  Softly she was going up,
  And a star or two beside--

  Her beams bemocked the sultry main,
  Like April hoar-frost spread;
  But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
  The charmed water burnt alway
  A still and awful red.

  Beyond the shadow of the ship,
  I watched the water-snakes:
  They moved in tracks of shining white,
  And when they reared, the elfish light
  Fell off in hoary flakes.

  Within the shadow of the ship
  I watched their rich attire:
  Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
  They coiled and swam; and every track
  Was a flash of golden fire.

  O happy living things! no tongue
  Their beauty might declare:
  A spring of love gushed from my heart,
  And I blessed them unaware:
  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
  And I blessed them unaware.

  The selfsame moment I could pray;
  And from my neck so free
  The Albatross fell off, and sank
  Like lead into the sea.


PART V


  Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
  Beloved from pole to pole!
  To Mary Queen the praise be given!
  She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven,
  That slid into my soul.

  The silly buckets on the deck,
  That had so long remained,
  I dreamt that they were filled with dew;
  And when I awoke, it rained.

  My lips were wet, my throat was cold,
  My garments all were dank;
  Sure I had drunken in my dreams,
  And still my body drank.

  I moved, and could not feel my limbs:
  I was so light--almost
  I thought that I had died in sleep;
  And was a blessed ghost.

  And soon I heard a roaring wind:
  It did not come anear;
  But with its sound it shook the sails,
  That were so thin and sere.

  The upper air burst into life!
  And a hundred fire-flags sheen,
  To and fro they were hurried about!
  And to and fro, and in and out,
  The wan stars danced between.

  And the coming wind did roar more loud,
  And the sails did sigh like sedge;
  And the rain poured down from one black cloud;
  The Moon was at its edge.

  The thick black cloud was cleft, and still
  The Moon was at its side:
  Like waters shot from some high crag,
  The lightning fell with never a jag,
  A river steep and wide.

  The loud wind never reached the ship,
  Yet now the ship moved on!
  Beneath the lightning and the Moon
  The dead men gave a groan.

  They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
  Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
  It had been strange, even in a dream,!
  To have seen those dead men rise.

  The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
  Yet never a breeze up blew;
  The mariners all 'gan work the ropes,
  Where they were wont to do;
  They raised their limbs like lifeless tools--
  We were a ghastly crew.

  The body of my brother's son
  Stood by me, knee to knee:
  The body and I pulled at one rope
  But he said nought to me.

  "I fear thee, ancient Mariner!"
  Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest!
  'Twas not those souls that fled in pain,
  Which to their corses came again,
  But a troop of spirits blest:

  For when it dawned--they dropped their arms,
  And clustered round the mast;
  Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths,
  And from their bodies passed.

  Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
  Then darted to the Sun;
  Slowly the sounds came back again,
  Now mixed, now one by one.

  Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
  I heard the sky-lark sing;
  Sometimes all little birds that are,
  How they seemed to fill the sea and air
  With their sweet jargoning!

  And now 'twas like all instruments,
  Now like a lonely flute;
  And now it is an angel's song,
  That makes the heavens be mute.

  It ceased; yet still the sails made on
  A pleasant noise till noon,
  A noise like of a hidden brook
  In the leafy month of June,
  That to the sleeping woods all night
  Singeth a quiet tune.

  Till noon we quietly sailed on,
  Yet never a breeze did breathe:
  Slowly and smoothly went the ship,
  Moved onward from beneath.

  Under the keel nine fathom deep,
  From the land of mist and snow,
  The spirit slid: and it was he
  That made the ship to go.
  The sails at noon left off their tune,
  And the ship stood still also.

  The Sun, right up above the mast,
  Had fixed her to the ocean:
  But in a minute she 'gan stir,
  With a short uneasy motion--
  Backwards and forwards half her length
  With a short uneasy motion.

  Then like a pawing horse let go,
  She made a sudden bound:
  It flung the blood into my head,
  And I fell down in a swound.

  How long in that same fit I lay,
  I have not to declare;
  But ere my living life returned,
  I heard and in my soul discerned
  Two voices in the air.

  "Is it he?" quoth one, "Is this the man?
  By him who died on cross,
  With his cruel bow he laid full low
  The harmless Albatross.

  The spirit who bideth by himself
  In the land of mist and snow,
  He loved the bird that loved the man
  Who shot him with his bow."

  The other was a softer voice,
  As soft as honey-dew:
  Quoth he, "The man hath penance done,
  And penance more will do."


PART VI


FIRST VOICE

  "But tell me, tell me! speak again,
  Thy soft response renewing--
  What makes that ship drive on so fast?
  What is the ocean doing?"

SECOND VOICE

  "Still as a slave before his lord,
  The ocean hath no blast;
  His great bright eye most silently
  Up to the Moon is cast--

  If he may know which way to go;
  For she guides him smooth or grim.
  See, brother, see! how graciously
  She looketh down on him."

FIRST VOICE

  "But why drives on that ship so fast,
  Without or wave or wind?"

SECOND VOICE

  "The air is cut away before,
  And closes from behind.

  Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
  Or we shall be belated:
  For slow and slow that ship will go,
  When the Mariner's trance is abated."

  I woke, and we were sailing on
  As in a gentle weather:
  'Twas night, calm night, the moon was high,
  The dead men stood together.

  All stood together on the deck,
  For a charnel-dungeon fitter:
  All fixed on me their stony eyes,
  That in the Moon did glitter.

  The pang, the curse, with which they died,
  Had never passed away:
  I could not draw my eyes from theirs,
  Nor turn them up to pray.

  And now this spell was snapt: once more
  I viewed the ocean green,
  And looked far forth, yet little saw
  Of what had else been seen--

  Like one, that on a lonesome road
  Doth walk in fear and dread,
  And having once turned round walks on,
  And turns no more his head;
  Because he knows, a frightful fiend
  Doth close behind him tread.

  But soon there breathed a wind on me,
  Nor sound nor motion made:
  Its path was not upon the sea,
  In ripple or in shade.

  It raised my hair, it fanned my cheek
  Like a meadow-gale of spring--
  It mingled strangely with my fears,
  Yet it felt like a welcoming.

  Swiftly, swiftly flew the ship,
  Yet she sailed softly too:
  Sweetly, sweetly blew the breeze--
  On me alone it blew.

  Oh! dream of joy! is this indeed
  The light-house top I see?
  Is this the hill? is this the kirk?
  Is this mine own countree?

  We drifted o'er the harbour-bar,
  And I with sobs did pray--
  O let me be awake, my God!
  Or let me sleep alway.

  The harbour-bay was clear as glass,
  So smoothly it was strewn!
  And on the bay the moonlight lay,
  And the shadow of the Moon.

  The rock shone bright, the kirk no less,
  That stands above the rock:
  The moonlight steeped in silentness
  The steady weathercock.

  And the bay was white with silent light
  Till rising from the same,
  Full many shapes, that shadows were,
  In crimson colours came.

  A little distance from the prow
  Those crimson shadows were:
  I turned my eyes upon the deck--
  Oh, Christ! what saw I there!

  Each corse lay flat, lifeless and flat,
  And, by the holy rood!
  A man all light, a seraph-man,
  On every corse there stood.

  This seraph-band, each waved his hand:
  It was a heavenly sight!
  They stood as signals to the land,
  Each one a lovely light;

  This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
  No voice did they impart--
  No voice; but oh! the silence sank
  Like music on my heart.

  But soon I heard the dash of oars,
  I heard the Pilot's cheer;
  My head was turned perforce away,
  And I saw a boat appear.

  The Pilot and the Pilot's boy,
  I heard them coming fast:
  Dear Lord in Heaven! it was a joy
  The dead men could not blast.

  I saw a third--I heard his voice:
  It is the Hermit good!
  He singeth loud his godly hymns
  That he makes in the wood.
  He'll shrieve my soul, he'll wash away
  The Albatross's blood.


PART VII


  This Hermit good lives in that wood
  Which slopes down to the sea.
  How loudly his sweet voice he rears!
  He loves to talk with marineres
  That come from a far countree.

  He kneels at morn, and noon, and eve--
  He hath a cushion plump:
  It is the moss that wholly hides
  The rotted old oak-stump.

  The skiff-boat neared: I heard them talk,'
  "Why, this is strange, I trow!
  Where are those lights so many and fair,
  That signal made but now?"

  "Strange, by my faith!" the Hermit said--
  "And they answered not our cheer!
  The planks looked warped! and see those sails,
  How thin they are and sere!
  I never saw aught like to them,
  Unless perchance it were

  Brown skeletons of leaves that lag
  My forest-brook along;
  When the ivy-tod is heavy with snow,
  And the owlet whoops to the wolf below,
  That eats the she-wolf's young."

  "Dear Lord! it hath a fiendish look-
  (The Pilot made reply)
  I am a-feared"--"Push on, push on!"
  Said the Hermit cheerily.

  The boat came closer to the ship,
  But I nor spake nor stirred;
  The boat came close beneath the ship,
  And straight a sound was heard.

  Under the water it rumbled on,
  Still louder and more dread:
  It reached the ship, it split the bay;
  The ship went down like lead.

  Stunned by that loud and dreadful sound,
  Which sky and ocean smote,
  Like one that hath been seven days drowned
  My body lay afloat;
  But swift as dreams, myself I found
  Within the Pilot's boat.

  Upon the whirl, where sank the ship,
  The boat spun round and round;
  And all was still, save that the hill
  Was telling of the sound.

  I moved my lips--the Pilot shrieked
  And fell down in a fit;
  The holy Hermit raised his eyes,
  And prayed where he did sit.

  I took the oars: the Pilot's boy,
  Who now doth crazy go,
  Laughed loud and long, and all the while
  His eyes went to and fro.
  "Ha! ha!" quoth he, "full plain I see,
  The Devil knows how to row."

  And now, all in my own countree,
  I stood on the firm land!
  The Hermit stepped forth from the boat,
  And scarcely he could stand.

  "O shrieve me, shrieve me, holy man!"
  The Hermit crossed his brow.
  "Say quick," quoth he, "I bid thee say
  What manner of man art thou?"

  Forthwith this frame of mine was wrenched
  With a woful agony,
  Which forced me to begin my tale;
  And then it left me free.

  Since then, at an uncertain hour,
  That agony returns:
  And till my ghastly tale is told,
  This heart within me burns.

  I pass, like night, from land to land;
  I have strange power of speech;
  That moment that his face I see,
  I know the man that must hear me:
  To him my tale I teach.

  What loud uproar bursts from that door!
  The wedding-guests are there:
  But in the garden-bower the bride
  And bride-maids singing are:
  And hark the little vesper bell,
  Which biddeth me to prayer!

  O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been
  Alone on a wide wide sea:
  So lonely 'twas, that God himself
  Scarce seemed there to be.

  O sweeter than the marriage-feast,
  Tis sweeter far to me,
  To walk together to the kirk
  With a goodly company!--

  To walk together to the kirk,
  And all together pray,
  While each to his great Father bends,
  Old men, and babes, and loving friends,
  And youths and maidens gay!

  Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
  To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
  He prayeth well, who loveth well
  Both man and bird and beast.

  He prayeth best, who loveth best
  All things both great and small;
  For the dear God who loveth us,
  He made and loveth all.

  The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
  Whose beard with age is hoar,
  Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
  Turned from the bridegroom's door.

  He went like one that hath been stunned,
  And is of sense forlorn:
  A sadder and a wiser man,
  He rose the morrow morn.

1797-1798.

[Footnote 1: For the last two lines of this stanza,
I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth. It was on a delightful
walk from Nether Stowey
to Dulverton, with him and his sister, in the autumn of 1797,
that this poem was planned, and in part composed. [Note of
S. T. C., first printed in _Sibylline Leaves_.]]




CHRISTABEL


PART THE FIRST

  'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
  And the owls have awakened the crowing cock,"
  Tu--whit!--Tu--whoo!
  And hark, again! the crowing cock,
  How drowsily it crew.

  Sir Leoline; the Baron rich,
  Hath a toothless mastiff, which
  From her kennel beneath the rock
  Maketh answer to the clock,
  Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour;
  Ever and aye, by shine and shower,
  Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
  Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.

  Is the night chilly and dark?
  The night is chilly, but not dark.
  The thin gray cloud is spread on high,
  It covers but not hides the sky.
  The moon is behind, and at the full;
  And yet she looks both small and dull.
  The night is chill, the cloud is gray:
  'Tis a month before the month of May,
  And the Spring comes slowly up this way.

  The lovely lady, Christabel,
  Whom her father loves so well,
  What makes her in the wood so late,
  A furlong from the castle gate?
  She had dreams all yesternight
  Of her own betrothed knight;
  And she in the midnight wood will pray
  For the weal of her lover that's far away.

  She stole along, she nothing spoke,
  The sighs she heaved were soft and low,
  And naught was green upon the oak
  But moss and rarest misletoe:
  She kneels beneath the huge oak tree,
  And in silence prayeth she.

  The lady sprang up suddenly,
  The lovely lady, Christabel!
  It moaned as near, as near can be,
  But what it is she cannot tell.--
  On the other side it seems to be,
  Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree.

  The night is chill; the forest bare;
  Is it the wind that moaneth bleak?
  There is not wind enough in the air
  To move away the ringlet curl
  From the lovely lady's cheek--
  There is not wind enough to twirl
  The one red leaf, the last of its clan,
  That dances as often as dance it can,
  Hanging so light, and hanging so high,
  On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky.

  Hush, beating heart of Christabel!
  Jesu, Maria, shield her well!
  She folded her arms beneath her cloak,
  And stole to the other side of the oak.
      What sees she there?

  There she sees a damsel bright,
  Drest in a silken robe of white,
  That shadowy in the moonlight shone:
  The neck that made that white robe wan,
  Her stately neck, and arms were bare;
  Her blue-veined feet unsandal'd were,
  And wildly glittered here and there
  The gems entangled in her hair.
  I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
  A lady so richly clad as she--
  Beautiful exceedingly!

  Mary mother, save me now!
  (Said Christabel,) And who art thou?

  The lady strange made answer meet,
  And her voice was faint and sweet:--
  Have pity on my sore distress,
  I scarce can speak for weariness:
  Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear!
  Said Christabel, How camest thou here?
  And the lady, whose voice was faint and sweet,
  Did thus pursue her answer meet:--

  My sire is of a noble line,
  And my name is Geraldine:
  Five warriors seized me yestermorn,
  Me, even me, a maid forlorn:
  They choked my cries with force and fright,
  And tied me on a palfrey white.

  The palfrey was as fleet as wind,
  And they rode furiously behind.
  They spurred amain, their steeds were white:
  And once we crossed the shade of night.
  As sure as Heaven shall rescue me,
  I have no thought what men they be;
  Nor do I know how long it is
  (For I have lain entranced I wis)
  Since one, the tallest of the five,
  Took me from the palfrey's back,
  A weary woman, scarce alive.
  Some muttered words his comrades spoke:
  He placed me underneath this oak;
  He swore they would return with haste;
  Whither they went I cannot tell
  I thought I heard, some minutes past,
  Sounds as of a castle bell.
  Stretch forth thy hand (thus ended she),
  And help a wretched maid to flee.

  Then Christabel stretched forth her hand,
  And comforted fair Geraldine:
  O well, bright dame! may you command
  The service of Sir Leoline;
  And gladly our stout chivalry
  Will he send forth and friends withal
  To guide and guard you safe and free
  Home to your noble father's hall.

  She rose: and forth with steps they passed
  That strove to be, and were not, fast.
  Her gracious stars the lady blest,
  And thus spake on sweet Christabel:
  All our household are at rest,
  The hall as silent as the cell;
  Sir Leoline is weak in health,
  And may not well awakened be,
  But we will move as if in stealth,
  And I beseech your courtesy,
  This night, to share your couch with me.

  They crossed the moat, and Christabel
  Took the key that fitted well;
  A little door she opened straight,
  All in the middle of the gate;
  The gate that was ironed within and without
  Where an army in battle array had marched out.
  The lady sank, belike through pain,
  And Christabel with might and main
  Lifted her up, a weary weight,
  Over the threshold of the gate:
  Then the lady rose again,
  And moved, as she were not in pain.

  So free from danger, free from fear,
  They crossed the court: right glad they were.
  And Christabel devoutly cried
  To the lady by her side,
  Praise we the Virgin all divine
  Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!
  Alas! alas! said Geraldine,
  I cannot speak for weariness.
  So free from danger, free from fear,
  They crossed the court: right glad they were.

  Outside her kennel, the mastiff old
  Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
  The mastiff old did not awake,
  Yet she an angry moan did make!
  And what can ail the mastiff bitch?
  Never till now she uttered yell
  Beneath the eye of Christabel.
  Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
  For what can ail the mastiff bitch?

  They passed the hall, that echoes still,
  Pass as lightly as you will!
  The brands were flat, the brands were dying,
  Amid their own white ashes lying;
  But when the lady passed, there came
  A tongue of light, a fit of flame
  And Christabel saw the lady's eye,
  And nothing else saw she thereby,
  Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall,
  Which hung in a murky old niche in the wall.
  O softly tread, said Christabel,
  My father seldom sleepeth well.

  Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare,
  And jealous of the listening air
  They steal their way from stair to stair,
  Now in glimmer, and now in gloom,
  And now they pass the Baron's room,
  As still as death with stifled breath!
  And now have reached her chamber door;
  And now doth Geraldine press down
  The rushes of the chamber floor.

  The moon shines dim in the open air,
  And not a moonbeam enters here.
  But they without its light can see
  The chamber carved so curiously,
  Carved with figures strange and sweet,
  All made out of the carver's brain,
  For a lady's chamber meet:
  The lamp with twofold silver chain
  Is fastened to an angel's feet.

  The silver lamp burns dead and dim;
  But Christabel the lamp will trim.
  She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright,
  And left it swinging to and fro,
  While Geraldine, in wretched plight,
  Sank down upon the floor below.

  O weary lady, Geraldine,
  I pray you, drink this cordial wine!
  It is a wine of virtuous powers;
  My mother made it of wild flowers.
  And will your mother pity me,
  Who am a maiden most forlorn?
  Christabel answered--Woe is me!
  She died the hour that I was born.
  I have heard the grey-haired friar tell
  How on her death-bed she did say,
  That she should hear the castle-bell
  Strike twelve upon my wedding-day.
  O mother dear! that thou wert here!
  I would, said Geraldine, she were!

  But soon with altered voice, said she--
  "Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine!
  I have power to bid thee flee."
  Alas! what ails poor Geraldine?
  Why stares she with unsettled eye?
  Can she the bodiless dead espy?
  And why with hollow voice cries she,
  "Off, woman, off! this hour is mine--
  Though thou her guardian spirit be,
  Off, woman, off! 'tis given to me."

  Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side,
  And raised to heaven her eyes so blue--,
  Alas! said she, this ghastly ride--
  Dear lady! it hath wildered you!
  The lady wiped her moist cold brow,
  And faintly said, "'tis over now!"
  Again the wild-flower wine she drank:
  Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
  And from the floor whereon she sank,
  The lofty lady stood upright:
  She was most beautiful to see,
  Like a lady of a far countrée.
  And thus the lofty lady spake--
  "All they who live in the upper sky,
  Do love you, holy Christabel!
  And you love them, and for their sake
  And for the good which me befel,
  Even I in my degree will try,
  Fair maiden, to requite you well.
  But now unrobe yourself; for I
  Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie."

  Quoth Christabel, So let it be!
  And as the lady bade, did she.
  Her gentle limbs did she undress,
  And lay down in her loveliness.

  But through her brain of weal and woe
  So many thoughts moved to and fro,
  That vain it were her lids to close;
  So half-way from the bed she rose,
  And on her elbow did recline
  To look at the lady Geraldine.

  Beneath the lamp the lady bowed,
  And slowly rolled her eyes around
  Then drawing in her breath aloud,
  Like one that shuddered, she unbound
  The cincture from beneath her breast:
  Her silken robe, and inner vest,
  Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
  Behold! her bosom and half her side------
  A sight to dream of, not to tell!
  O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!

  Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs;
  Ah! what a stricken look was hers!
  Deep from within she seems half-way
  To lift some weight with sick assay,
  And eyes the maid and seeks delay;
  Then suddenly, as one defied,
  Collects herself in scorn and pride,
  And lay down by the Maiden's side!--
  And in her arms the maid she took,
          Ah wel-a-day!
  And with low voice and doleful look
  These words did say:
    In the touch of this bosom there worketh a spell,
  Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel!
  Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow,
  This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow;
        But vainly thou warrest,
          For his is alone in
        Thy power to declare,
          That in the dim forest
        Thou heard'st a low moaning,
  And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair;
  And didst bring her home with thee in love and
     in charity,
  To shield her and shelter her from the damp
     air."


THE CONCLUSION
TO PART THE FIRST


  It was a lovely sight to see
  The lady Christabel, when she
  Was praying at the old oak tree.
     Amid the jagged shadows
     Of mossy leafless boughs,
     Kneeling in the moonlight,
     To make her gentle vows;
  Her slender palms together prest,
  Heaving sometimes on her breast;
  Her face resigned to bliss or bale--
  Her face, oh call it fair not pale,
  And both blue eyes more, bright than clear,
  Each about to have a tear.

  With open eyes (ah woe is me!)
  Asleep, and dreaming fearfully,
  Fearfully dreaming, yet, I wis,.
  Dreaming that alone, which is--
  O sorrow and shame! Can this be she,
  The lady, who knelt at the old oak tree?
  And lo! the worker of these harms,
  That holds the maiden in her arms,
  Seems to slumber still and mild,
  As a mother with her child.

  A star hath set, a star hath risen,
  O Geraldine! since arms of thine
  Have been the lovely lady's prison.
  O Geraldine! one hour was thine
  Thou'st had thy will! By tairn and rill,
  The night-birds all that hour were still.
  But now they are jubilant anew,
  From cliff and tower, tu-whoo! tu-whoo!
  Tu-whoo! tu-whoo! from wood and fell!

  And see! the lady Christabel
  Gathers herself from out her trance;
  Her limbs relax, her countenance
  Grows sad and soft; the smooth thin lids
  Close o'er her eyes; and tears she sheds
  Large tears that leave the lashes bright!
  And oft the while she seems to smile
  As infants at a sudden light!

  Yea, she doth smile, and she doth weep,
  Like a youthful hermitess,
  Beauteous in a wilderness,
  Who, praying always, prays in sleep.
  And, if she move unquietly,
  Perchance,'tis but the blood so free
  Comes back and tingles in her feet.
  No doubt, she hath a vision sweet.
  What if her guardian spirit 'twere,
  What if she knew her mother near?
  But this she knows, in joys and woes,
  That saints will aid if men will call:
  For the blue sky bends over all!

1797.


PART THE SECOND


  Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
  Knells us back to a world of death.
  These words Sir Leoline first said,
  When he rose and found his lady dead:
  These words Sir Leoline will say
  Many a morn to his dying day!

  And hence the custom and law began
  That still at dawn the sacristan,
  Who duly pulls the heavy bell,
  Five and forty beads must tell
  Between each stroke--a warning knell,
  Which not a soul can choose but hear
  From Bratha Head to Wyndermere.
  Saith Bracy the bard, So let it knell!
  And let the drowsy sacristan
  Still count as slowly as he can!
  There is no lack of such, I ween,
  As well fill up the space between.
  In Langdale Pike and Witch's Lair,
  And Dungeon-ghyll so foully rent,
  With ropes of rock and bells of air
  Three sinful sextons' ghosts are pent,
  Who all give back, one after t'other,
  The death-note to their living brother;
  And oft too, by the knell offended,
  Just as their one! two! three! is ended,
  The devil mocks the doleful tale
  With a merry peal from Borrowdale.

  The air is still! through mist and cloud
  That merry peal comes ringing loud;
  And Geraldine shakes off her dread,
  And rises lightly from the bed;
  Puts on her silken vestments white,
  And tricks her hair in lovely plight,
  And nothing doubting of her spell
  Awakens the lady Christabel
  "Sleep you, sweet lady Christabel?
  I trust that you have rested well."

  And Christabel awoke and spied
  The same who lay down by her side--
  O rather say, the same whom she
  Raised up beneath the old oak tree!
  Nay, fairer yet! and yet more fair!
  For she belike hath drunken deep
  Of all the blessedness of sleep!
  And while she spake, her looks, her air,
  Such gentle thankfulness declare,
  That (so it seemed) her girded vests
  Grew tight beneath her heaving breasts.
  "Sure I have sinn'd!" said Christabel,
  "Now heaven be praised if all be well!"
  And in low faltering tones, yet sweet,
  Did she the lofty lady greet
  With such perplexity of mind
  As dreams too lively leave behind.

  So quickly she rose, and quickly arrayed
  Her maiden limbs, and having prayed
  That He, who on the cross did groan,
  Might wash away her sins unknown,
  She forthwith led fair Geraldine
  To meet her sire, Sir Leoline.

  The lovely maid and the lady tall
  Are pacing both into the hall,
  And pacing on through page and groom,
  Enter the Baron's presence-room.

  The Baron rose, and while he prest
  His gentle daughter to his breast,
  With cheerful wonder in his eyes
  The lady Geraldine espies,
  And gave such welcome to the same,
  As might beseem so bright a dame!

  But when he heard the lady's tale,
  And when she told her father's name,
  Why waxed Sir Leoline so pale,
  Murmuring o'er the name again,
  Lord Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine?

  Alas! they had been friends in youth;
  But whispering tongues can poison truth;
  And constancy lives in realms above;
  And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
  And to be wroth with one we love
  Doth work like madness in the brain.
  And thus it chanced, as I divine,
  With Roland and Sir Leoline.
  Each spake words of high disdain
  And insult to his heart's best brother:
  They parted--ne'er to meet again!
  But never either found another
  To free the hollow heart from paining--
  They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
  Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;
  A dreary sea now flows between.
  But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
  Shall wholly do away, I ween,
  The marks of that which once hath been.
  Sir Leoline, a moment's space,
  Stood gazing on the damsel's face:
  And the youthful Lord of Tryermaine
  Came back upon his heart again.

  O then the Baron forgot his age,
  His noble heart swelled high with rage;
  He swore by the wounds in Jesu's side
  He would proclaim it far and wide,
  With trump and solemn heraldry,
  That they, who thus had wronged the dame
  Were base as spotted infamy!
  "And if they dare deny the same,
  My herald shall appoint a week,
  And let the recreant traitors seek
  My tourney court--that there and then
  I may dislodge their reptile souls
  From the bodies and forms of men!"
  He spake: his eye in lightning rolls!
  For the lady was ruthlessly seized; and he kenned
  In the beautiful lady the child of his friend!

  And now the tears were on his face,
  And fondly in his arms he took
  Fair Geraldine, who met the embrace,
  Prolonging it with joyous look.
  Which when she viewed, a vision fell
  Upon the soul of Christabel,

  The vision of fear, the touch and pain!
  She shrunk and shuddered, and saw again--
  (Ah, woe is me! Was it for thee,
  Thou gentle maid! such sights to see?)

  Again she saw that bosom old,
  Again she felt that bosom cold,
  And drew in her breath with a hissing sound:
  Whereat the Knight turned wildly round,
  And nothing saw, but his own sweet maid
  With eyes upraised, as one that prayed.

  The touch, the sight, had passed away,
  And in its stead that vision blest,
  Which comforted her after-rest,
  While in the lady's arms she lay,
  Had put a rapture in her breast,
  And on her lips and o'er her eyes
  Spread smiles like light!

                             With new surprise,
  "What ails then my beloved child?"
  The Baron said--His daughter mild
  Made answer, "All will yet be well!"
  I ween, she had no power to tell
  Aught else: so mighty was the spell.
  Yet he, who saw this Geraldine,
  Had deemed her sure a thing divine.
  Such sorrow with such grace she blended,
  As if she feared she had offended

  Sweet Christabel, that gentle maid!
  And with such lowly tones she prayed
  She might be sent without delay
  Home to her father's mansion.

                               "Nay!
  Nay, by my soul!" said Leoline.
  "Ho! Bracy the bard, the charge be thine!
  Go thou, with music sweet and loud,
  And take two steeds with trappings proud,
  And take the youth whom thou lov'st best
  To bear thy harp, and learn thy song,
  And clothe you both in solemn vest,
  And over the mountains haste along,
  Lest wandering folk, that are abroad,
  Detain you on the valley road.

  "And when he has crossed the Irthing flood,
  My merry bard! he hastes, he hastes
  Up Knorren Moor, through Halegarth Wood,
  And reaches soon that castle good
  Which stands and threatens Scotland's wastes.

  "Bard Bracy! bard Bracy! your horses are fleet,
  Ye must ride up the hall, your music so sweet,
  More loud than your horses' echoing feet!
  And loud and loud to Lord Roland call,
  Thy daughter is safe in Langdale hall!
  Thy beautiful daughter is safe and free--
  Sir Leoline greets thee thus through me.

  He bids thee come without delay
  With all thy numerous array;
  And take thy lovely daughter home:
  And he will meet thee on the way
  With all his numerous array
  White with their panting palfreys' foam:
  And, by mine honour! I will say,
  That I repent me of the day
  When I spake words of fierce disdain
  To Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine!--
  --For since that evil hour hath flown,
  Many a summer's sun hath shone;
  Yet ne'er found I a friend again
  Like Roland de Vaux of Tryermaine."

  The lady fell, and clasped his knees,
  Her face upraised, her eyes o'erflowing;
  And Bracy replied, with faltering voice,
  His gracious hail on all bestowing;
  "Thy words, thou sire of Christabel,
  Are sweeter than my harp can tell;
  Yet might I gain a boon of thee,
  This day my journey should not be,
  So strange a dream hath come to me;
  That I had vowed with music loud
  To clear yon wood from thing unblest,
  Warn'd by a vision in my rest!
  For in my sleep I saw that dove,
  That gentle bird, whom thou dost love,
  And call'st by thy own daughter's name--
  Sir Leoline! I saw the same,
  Fluttering, and uttering fearful moan,
  Among the green herbs in the forest alone.
  Which when I saw and when I heard,
  I wonder'd what might ail the bird;
  For nothing near it could I see,
  Save the grass and green herbs underneath the old tree.

  "And in my dream, methought, I went
  To search out what might there be found;
  And what the sweet bird's trouble meant,
  That thus lay fluttering on the ground.
  I went and peered, and could descry
  No cause for her distressful cry;
  But yet for her dear lady's sake
  I stooped, methought, the dove to take,
  When lo! I saw a bright green snake
  Coiled around its wings and neck.
  Green as the herbs on which it couched,
  Close by the dove's its head it crouched;
  And with the dove it heaves and stirs,
  Swelling its neck as she swelled hers!
  I woke; it was the midnight hour,
  The clock was echoing in the tower;
  But though my slumber was gone by,
  This dream it would not pass away--
  It seems to live upon my eye!
  And thence I vowed this self-same day
  With music strong and saintly song
  To wander through the forest bare,
  Lest aught unholy loiter there."

  Thus Bracy said: the Baron, the while,
  Half-listening heard him with a smile;
  Then turned to Lady Geraldine,
  His eyes made up of wonder and love;
  And said in courtly accents fine,
  "Sweet maid, Lord Roland's beauteous dove,
  With arms more strong than harp or song,
  Thy sire and I will crush the snake!"
  He kissed her forehead as he spake,
  And Geraldine in maiden wise
  Casting down her large bright eyes,
  With blushing cheek and courtesy fine
  She turned her from Sir Leoline;
  Softly gathering up her train,
  That o'er her right arm fell again;
  And folded her arms across her chest,
  And couched her head upon her breast,
  And looked askance at Christabel--
  Jesu, Maria, shield her well!

  A snake's small eye blinks dull and shy,
  And the lady's eyes they shrunk in her head,
  Each shrunk up to a serpent's eye,
  And with somewhat of malice, and more of dread,
  At Christabel she look'd askance!--
  One moment--and the sight was fled!
  But Christabel in dizzy trance
  Stumbling on the unsteady ground
  Shuddered aloud, with a hissing sound;
  And Geraldine again turned round,
  And like a thing, that sought relief,
  Full of wonder and full of grief,
  She rolled her large bright eyes divine
  Wildly on Sir Leoline.

  The maid, alas! her thoughts are gone,
  She nothing sees--no sight but one!
  The maid, devoid of guile and sin,
  I know not how, in fearful wise,
  So deeply had she drunken in
  That look, those shrunken serpent eyes,
  That all her features were resigned
  To this sole image in her mind:
  And passively did imitate
  That look of dull and treacherous hate!
  And thus she stood, in dizzy trance,
  Still picturing that look askance
  With forced unconscious sympathy
  Full before her father's view--
  As far as such a look could be
  In eyes so innocent and blue!

  And when the trance was o'er, the maid
  Paused awhile, and inly prayed:
  Then falling at the Baron's feet,
  "By my mother's soul do I entreat
  That thou this woman send away!"
  She said: and more she could not say:
  For what she knew she could not tell,
  O'er-mastered by the mighty spell.

  Why is thy cheek so wan and wild,
  Sir Leoline? Thy only child
  Lies at thy feet, thy joy, thy pride,
  So fair, so innocent, so mild;
  The same, for whom thy lady died!
  O, by the pangs of her dear mother
  Think thou no evil of thy child!
  For her, and thee, and for no other,
  She prayed the moment ere she died:
  Prayed that the babe for whom she died,
  Might prove her dear lord's joy and pride!
    That prayer her deadly pangs beguiled,
          Sir Leoline!
    And wouldst thou wrong thy only child,
          Her child and thine?

  Within the Baron's heart and brain
  If thoughts, like these, had any share,
  They only swelled his rage and pain,
  And did but work confusion there.
  His heart was cleft with pain and rage,
  His cheeks they quivered, his eyes were wild,
  Dishonour'd thus in his old age;
  Dishonour'd by his only child,
  And all his hospitality
  To the insulted daughter of his friend
  By more than woman's jealousy
  Brought thus to a disgraceful end--
  He rolled his eye with stern regard
  Upon the gentle minstrel bard,
  And said in tones abrupt, austere--
  "Why, Bracy! dost thou loiter here?
  I bade thee hence!" The bard obeyed;
  And turning from his own sweet maid,
  The aged knight, Sir Leoline,
  Led forth the lady Geraldine!

  1801.


THE CONCLUSION
TO PART THE SECOND


  A little child, a limber elf,
  Singing, dancing to itself,
  A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
  That always finds, and never seeks,
  Makes such a vision to the sight
  As fills a father's eyes with light;
  And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
  Upon his heart, that he at last
  Must needs express his love's excess
  With words of unmeant bitterness.
  Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
  Thoughts so all unlike each other;
  To mutter and mock a broken charm,
  To dally with wrong that does no harm.
  Perhaps 'tis tender too and pretty
  At each wild word to feel within
  A sweet recoil of love and pity.
  And what, if in a world of sin
  (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
  Such giddiness of heart and brain
  Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
  So talks as it's most used to do.

?1801.




KUBLA KHAN

  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
  A stately pleasure-dome decree:
  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man
    Down to a sunless sea.
  So twice five miles of fertile ground
  With walls and towers were girdled round:
  And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
  And here were forests ancient as the hills,
  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

  But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
  Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
    A savage place! as holy and enchanted
    As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
    By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
    And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
    As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
    A mighty fountain momently was forced:
    Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
    Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
    Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
    And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
    It flung up momently the sacred river.
    Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
    Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
    Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
    And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
    And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
    Ancestral voices prophesying war!

    The shadow of the dome of pleasure
    Floated midway on the waves;
    Where was heard the mingled measure
    From the fountain and the caves.
  It was a miracle of rare device,
  A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

    A damsel with a dulcimer
    In a vision once I saw:
    It was an Abyssinian maid;
    And on her dulcimer she played,
    Singing of Mount Abora.
    Could I revive within me
    Her symphony and song,
    To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
  That with music loud and long,
  I would build that dome in air,
  That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
  And all who heard should see them there,
  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
  Weave a circle round him thrice,
  And close your eyes with holy dread,
  For he on honey-dew hath fed,
  And drunk the milk of Paradise.

1798.




LEWTI
OR THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE-CHAUNT


  At midnight by the stream I roved,
  To forget the form I loved.
  Image of Lewti! from my mind
  Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

  The Moon was high, the moonlight gleam
    And the shadow of a star
  Heaved upon Tamaha's stream;
    But the rock shone brighter far,
  The rock half sheltered from my view
  By pendent boughs of tressy yew.--
  So shines my Lewti's forehead fair,
  Gleaming through her sable hair,
  Image of Lewti! from my mind
  Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

  I saw a cloud of palest hue,
  Onward to the moon it passed;
  Still brighter and more bright it grew,
  With floating colours not a few,
  Till it reach'd the moon at last:
  Then the cloud was wholly bright,
  With a rich and amber light!
  And so with many a hope I seek
  And with such joy I find my Lewti;
  And even so my pale wan cheek
  Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty!
  Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind,
  If Lewti never will be kind.

  The little cloud-it floats away,
  Away it goes; away so soon?
  Alas! it has no power to stay:
  Its hues are dim, its hues are grey--
  Away it passes from the moon!
  How mournfully it seems to fly,
  Ever fading more and more,
  To joyless regions of the sky--
  And now 'tis whiter than before!
  As white as my poor cheek will be,
  When, Lewti! on my couch I lie,
  A dying man for love of thee.
  Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind--
  And yet, thou didst not look unkind.

  I saw a vapour in the sky,
  Thin, and white, and very high;
  I ne'er beheld so thin a cloud:
  Perhaps the breezes that can fly
  Now below and now above,
  Have snatched aloft the lawny shroud
  Of Lady fair--that died for love.
  For maids, as well as youths, have perished
  From fruitless love too fondly cherished.
  Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind--
  For Lewti never will be kind.

  Hush! my heedless feet from under
  Slip the crumbling banks for ever:
  Like echoes to a distant thunder,
  They plunge into the gentle river.
  The river-swans have heard my tread,
  And startle from their reedy bed.
  O beauteous birds! methinks ye measure
  Your movements to some heavenly tune!
  O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure
  To see you move beneath the moon,
  I would it were your true delight
  To sleep by day and wake all night.

  I know the place where Lewti lies
  When silent night has closed her eyes:
    It is a breezy jasmine-bower,
  The nightingale sings o'er her head:
    Voice of the Night! had I the power
  That leafy labyrinth to thread,
  And creep, like thee, with soundless tread,
  I then might view her bosom white
  Heaving lovely to my sight,
  As these two swans together heave
  On the gently-swelling wave.

  Oh! that she saw me in a dream,
    And dreamt that I had died for care;
  All pale and wasted I would seem
    Yet fair withal, as spirits are!
  I'd die indeed, if I might see
  Her bosom heave, and heave for me!
  Soothe, gentle image! soothe my mind!
  To-morrow Lewti may be kind.

1794.




THE BALLAD OF THE DARK LADIE
A FRAGMENT


  Beneath yon birch with silver bark,
  And boughs so pendulous and fair,
  The brook falls scatter'd down the rock:
  And all is mossy there!

  And there upon the moss she sits,
  The Dark Ladié in silent pain;
  The heavy tear is in her eye,
    And drops and swells again.

  Three times she sends her little page
  Up the castled mountain's breast,
  If he might find the Knight that wears
       The Griffin for his crest.

  The sun was sloping down the sky,
  And she had linger'd there all day,
  Counting moments, dreaming fears--
      Oh wherefore can he stay?

  She hears a rustling o'er the brook,
  She sees far off a swinging bough!
  "'Tis He! 'Tis my betrothed Knight!
      Lord Falkland, it is Thou!"

  She springs, she clasps him round the neck,
  She sobs a thousand hopes and fears,
  Her kisses glowing on his cheeks
      She quenches with her tears.

       *       *       *       *       *

  "My friends with rude ungentle words
  They scoff and bid me fly to thee!
  O give me shelter in thy breast!
      O shield and shelter me!

  "My Henry, I have given thee much,
  I gave what I can ne'er recall,
  I gave my heart, I gave my peace,
      O Heaven! I gave thee all."

  The Knight made answer to the Maid,
  While to his heart he held her hand,
  "Nine castles hath my noble sire,
      None statelier in the land.

  "The fairest one shall be my love's,
  The fairest castle of the nine!
  Wait only till the stars peep out,
      The fairest shall be thine:

  "Wait only till the hand of eve
  Hath wholly closed yon western bars,
  And through the dark we two will steal
      Beneath the twinkling stars!"--

  "The dark? the dark? No! not the dark?
  The twinkling stars? How, Henry? How?
  O God! 'twas in the eye of noon
      He pledged his sacred vow!

  "And in the eye of noon my love
  Shall lead me from my mother's door,
  Sweet boys and girls all clothed in white
      Strewing flowers before:

  "But first the nodding minstrels go
  With music meet for lordly bowers,
  The children next in snow-white vests,
      Strewing buds and flowers!

  "And then my love and I shall pace,
  My jet black hair in pearly braids,
  Between our comely bachelors
      And blushing bridal maids."

       *       *       *       *       *
1798.




LOVE

  All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
  Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
  All are but ministers of Love,
      And feed his sacred flame.

  Oft in my waking dreams do I
  Live o'er again that happy hour,
  When midway on the mount I lay,
      Beside the ruined tower.

  The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene
  Had blended with the lights of eve;
  And she was there, my hope, my joy,
      My own dear Genevieve!

  She leant against the armed man,
  The statue of the armed knight;
  She stood and listened to my lay,
      Amid the lingering light.

  Few sorrows hath she of her own.
  My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
  She loves me best, whene'er I sing
      The songs that make her grieve.

  I played a soft and doleful air,
  I sang an old and moving story--
  An old rude song, that suited well
      That ruin wild and hoary.

  She listened with a flitting blush,
  With downcast eyes and modest grace;
  For well she knew, I could not choose
      But gaze upon her face.

  I told her of the Knight that wore
  Upon his shield a burning brand;
  And that for ten long years he wooed
    The Lady of the Land.

  I told her how he pined: and ah!
  The deep, the low, the pleading tone
  With which I sang another's love,
    Interpreted my own.

  She listened with a flitting blush,
  With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
  And she forgave me, that I gazed
      Too fondly on her face!

  But when I told the cruel scorn
  That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
  And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
      Nor rested day nor night;

  That sometimes from the savage den,
  And sometimes from the darksome shade,
  And sometimes starting up at once
      In green and sunny glade,--

  There came and looked him in the face
  An angel beautiful and bright;
  And that he knew it was a Fiend,
      This miserable Knight!

  And that unknowing what he did,
  He leaped amid a murderous band,
  And saved from outrage worse than death
      The Lady of the Land!

  And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
  And how she tended him in vain--
  And ever strove to expiate
      The scorn that crazed his brain;--

  And that she nursed him in a cave;
  And how his madness went away,
  When on the yellow forest-leaves
      A dying man he lay;--

  His dying words-but when I reached
  That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
  My faltering voice and pausing harp
      Disturbed her soul with pity!

  All impulses of soul and sense
  Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve;
  The music and the doleful tale,
      The rich and balmy eve;

  And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
  An undistinguishable throng,
  And gentle wishes long subdued,
      Subdued and cherished long!

  She wept with pity and delight,
  She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
  And like the murmur of a dream,
      I heard her breathe my name.

  Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside,
  As conscious of my look she stepped--
  Then suddenly, with timorous eye
      She fled to me and wept.

  She half enclosed me with her arms,
  She pressed me with a meek embrace;
  And bending back her head, looked up,
      And gazed upon my face.

  'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
  And partly 'twas a bashful art,
  That I might rather feel, than see,
      The swelling of her heart.

  I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
  And told her love with virgin pride;
  And so I won my Genevieve,
      My bright and beauteous Bride.

1798-1799.




THE THREE GRAVES

A FRAGMENT OF A SEXTON'S TALE
PART I


  The grapes upon the Vicar's wall
    Were ripe as ripe could be;
  And yellow leaves in sun and wind
    Were falling from the tree.

  On the hedge-elms in the narrow lane
    Still swung the spikes of corn:
  Dear Lord! it seems but yesterday--
    Young Edward's marriage-morn.

  Up through that wood behind the church,
    There leads from Edward's door
  A mossy track, all over boughed,
    For half a mile or more.

  And from their house-door by that track
    The bride and bridegroom went;
  Sweet Mary, though she was not gay,
    Seemed cheerful and content.

  But when they to the church-yard came,
    I've heard poor Mary say,
  As soon as she stepped into the sun,
    Her heart it died away.

  And when the Vicar join'd their hands,
    Her limbs did creep and freeze;
  But when they prayed, she thought she saw
    Her mother on her knees.

  And o'er the church-path they returned--
    I saw poor Mary's back,
  Just as she stepped beneath the boughs
    Into the mossy track.

  Her feet upon the mossy track
    The married maiden set:
  That moment--I have heard her say--
    She wished she could forget.

  The shade o'er-flushed her limbs with heat--
    Then came a chill like death:
  And when the merry bells rang out,
    They seemed to stop her breath.

  Beneath the foulest mother's curse
    No child could ever thrive:
  A mother is a mother still,
    The holiest thing alive.

  So five months passed: the mother still
    Would never heal the strife;
  But Edward was a loving man,
    And Mary a fond wife.

  "My sister may not visit us,
    My mother says her nay:
  O Edward! you are all to me,
  I wish for your sake I could be
    More lifesome and more gay.

  "I'm dull and sad! indeed, indeed
    I know I have no reason!
  Perhaps I am not well in health,
    And 'tis a gloomy season."

  'Twas a drizzly time--no ice, no snow!
    And on the few fine days
  She stirred not out, lest she might meet
    Her mother in the ways.

  But Ellen, spite of miry ways
    And weather dark and dreary,
  Trudged every day to Edward's house,
    And made them all more cheery.

  Oh! Ellen was a faithful friend,
    More dear than any sister!
  As cheerful too as singing lark;
  And she ne'er left them till 'twas dark,
    And then they always missed her.

  And now Ash-Wednesday came-that day
    But few to church repair:
  For on that day you know we read
    The Commination prayer.

  Our late old Vicar, a kind man,
    Once, Sir, he said to me,
  He wished that service was clean out
    Of our good Liturgy.

  The mother walked into the church-
    To Ellen's seat she went:
  Though Ellen always kept her church
    All church-days during Lent.

  And gentle Ellen welcomed her
    With courteous looks and mild:
  Thought she, "What if her heart should melt,
    And all be reconciled!"

  The day was scarcely like a day--
    The clouds were black outright:
  And many a night, with half a moon,
    I've seen the church more light.

  The wind was wild; against the glass
    The rain did beat and bicker;
  The church-tower swinging over head,
    You scarce could hear the Vicar!

  And then and there the mother knelt,
    And audibly she cried-
  "Oh! may a clinging curse consume
    This woman by my side!

  "O hear me, hear me, Lord in Heaven,
    Although you take my life--
  O curse this woman, at whose house
    Young Edward woo'd his wife.

  "By night and day, in bed and bower,
    O let her cursed be!!! "
  So having prayed, steady and slow,
    She rose up from her knee!
  And left the church, nor e'er again
    The church-door entered she.

  I saw poor Ellen kneeling still,
    So pale! I guessed not why:
  When she stood up, there plainly was
    A trouble in her eye.

  And when the prayers were done, we all
    Came round and asked her why:
  Giddy she seemed, and sure, there was
    A trouble in her eye.

  But ere she from the church-door stepped
    She smiled and told us why:
  "It was a wicked woman's curse,"
    Quoth she, "and what care I?"

  She smiled, and smiled, and passed it off
    Ere from the door she stept--
  But all agree it would have been
    Much better had she wept.

  And if her heart was not at ease,
    This was her constant cry--
  "It was a wicked woman's curse--
   God's good, and what care I?"

  There was a hurry in her looks,
    Her struggles she redoubled:
  "It was a wicked woman's curse,
    And why should I be troubled?"

  These tears will come--I dandled her
    When 'twas the merest fairy--
  Good creature! and she hid it all:
    She told it not to Mary.

  But Mary heard the tale: her arms
   Round Ellen's neck she threw;
  "O Ellen, Ellen, she cursed me,
   And now she hath cursed you!"

  I saw young Edward by himself
   Stalk fast adown the lee,
  He snatched a stick from every fence,
   A twig from every tree.

  He snapped them still with hand or knee,
   And then away they flew!
  As if with his uneasy limbs
   He knew not what to do!

  You see, good Sir! that single hill?
   His farm lies underneath:
  He heard it there, he heard it all,
   And only gnashed his teeth.

  Now Ellen was a darling love
   In all his joys and cares:
  And Ellen's name and Mary's name
  Fast-linked they both together came,
   Whene'er he said his prayers.

  And in the moment of his prayers
   He loved them both alike:
   Yea, both sweet names with one sweet joy
   Upon his heart did strike!

  He reach'd his home, and by his looks
   They saw his inward strife:
  And they clung round him with their arms,
   Both Ellen and his wife.

  And Mary could not check her tears,
   So on his breast she bowed;
  Then frenzy melted into grief,
   And Edward wept aloud.

  Dear Ellen did not weep at all,
   But closelier did she cling,
  And turned her face and looked as if
   She saw some frightful thing.


PART II


  To see a man tread over graves
    I hold it no good mark;
  'Tis wicked in the sun and moon,
    And bad luck in the dark!

  You see that grave? The Lord he gives,
    The Lord, he takes away:
  O Sir! the child of my old age
    Lies there as cold as clay.

  Except that grave, you scarce see one
    That was not dug by me;
  I'd rather dance upon 'em all
    Than tread upon these three!

  "Aye, Sexton!'tis a touching tale."
    You, Sir! are but a lad;
  This month I'm in my seventieth year,
    And still it makes me sad.

  And Mary's sister told it me,
    For three good hours and more;
  Though I had heard it, in the main,
    From Edward's self, before.

  Well! it passed off! the gentle Ellen
    Did well nigh dote on Mary;
  And she went oftener than before,
  And Mary loved her more and more:
    She managed all the dairy.

  To market she on market-days,
    To church on Sundays came;
  All seemed the same: all seemed so, Sir!
    But all was not the same!

  Had Ellen lost her mirth? Oh! no!
    But she was seldom cheerful;
  And Edward look'd as if he thought
    That Ellen's mirth was fearful.

  When by herself, she to herself
    Must sing some merry rhyme;
  She could not now be glad for hours,
    Yet silent all the time.

  And when she soothed her friend, through all
    Her soothing words 'twas plain
  She had a sore grief of her own,
    A haunting in her brain.

  And oft she said, I'm not grown thin!
    And then her wrist she spanned;
  And once when Mary was down-cast,
    She took her by the hand,
  And gazed upon her, and at first
    She gently pressed her hand;

  Then harder, till her grasp at length
    Did gripe like a convulsion!
  "Alas!" said she, "we ne'er can be
    Made happy by compulsion!"

  And once her both arms suddenly
    Round Mary's neck she flung,
  And her heart panted, and she felt
    The words upon her tongue.

  She felt them coming, but no power
    Had she the words to smother;
  And with a kind of shriek she cried,
    "Oh Christ! you're like your mother!"

  So gentle Ellen now no more
    Could make this sad house cheery;
  And Mary's melancholy ways
    Drove Edward wild and weary.

  Lingering he raised his latch at eve,
   Though tired in heart and limb:
  He loved no other place, and yet
   Home was no home to him.

  One evening he took up a book,
    And nothing in it read;
  Then flung it down, and groaning cried,
    "O! Heaven! that I were dead."

  Mary looked up into his face,
    And nothing to him said;
  She tried to smile, and on his arm
    Mournfully leaned her head.

  And he burst into tears, and fell
    Upon his knees in prayer:
  "Her heart is broke! O God! my grief,
    It is too great to bear!"

  'Twas such a foggy time as makes
    Old sextons, Sir! like me,
  Rest on their spades to cough; the spring
    Was late uncommonly.

  And then the hot days, all at once,
    They came, we knew not how:
  You looked about for shade, when scarce
    A leaf was on a bough.

  It happened then ('twas in the bower,
    A furlong up the wood:
  Perhaps you know the place, and yet
    I scarce know how you should,)

  No path leads thither, 'tis not nigh
    To any pasture-plot;
  But clustered near the chattering brook,
    Lone hollies marked the spot.

  Those hollies of themselves a shape
    As of an arbour took,
  A close, round arbour; and it stands
    Not three strides from a brook.

  Within this arbour, which was still
    With scarlet berries hung,
  Were these three friends, one Sunday morn,
    Just as the first bell rung.

  'Tis sweet to hear a brook, 'tis sweet
   To hear the Sabbath-bell,
  'Tis sweet to hear them both at once,
   Deep in a woody dell.

  His limbs along the moss, his head
    Upon a mossy heap,
  With shut-up senses, Edward lay:
  That brook e'en on a working day
    Might chatter one to sleep.

  And he had passed a restless night,
   And was not well in health;
  The women sat down by his side,
   And talked as 'twere by stealth.

  "The Sun peeps through the close thick leaves,
    See, dearest Ellen! see!
  'Tis in the leaves, a little sun,
    No bigger than your ee;

  "A tiny sun, and it has got
    A perfect glory too;
  Ten thousand threads and hairs of light,
  Make up a glory gay and bright
    Round that small orb, so blue."

  And then they argued of those rays,
    What colour they might be;
  Says this, "They're mostly green"; says that,
    "They're amber-like to me."

  So they sat chatting, while bad thoughts
    Were troubling Edward's rest;
  But soon they heard his hard quick pants,
    And the thumping in his breast.

  "A mother too!" these self-same words
    Did Edward mutter plain;
  His face was drawn back on itself,
    With horror and huge pain.

  Both groan'd at once, for both knew well
    What thoughts were in his mind;
  When he waked up, and stared like one
    That hath been just struck blind.

  He sat upright; and ere the dream
    Had had time to depart,
  "O God, forgive me!" (he exclaimed)
    "I have torn out her heart."

  Then Ellen shrieked, and forthwith burst
    Into ungentle laughter;
  And Mary shivered, where she sat,
    And never she smiled after.

1797-1809.

_Carmen reliquum in futurum tempus relegatum._ To-morrow!
and To-morrow! and To-morrow!----[Note of S.T.C.--l8l5.]




DEJECTION: AN ODE


  Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
  With the old Moon in her arms;
  And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
  We shall have a deadly storm.
_Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence._


I

  Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
    The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
    This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
  Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
  Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes,
  Or the dull sobbing drafty that moans and rakes
     Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
     Which better far were mute.
     For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
     And overspread with phantom light,
     (With swimming phantom light o'erspread
     But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
  I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
     The, coming-on of rain and squally blast.
  And oh that even now the gust were swelling,
     And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
  Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
     And sent my soul abroad,
  Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
  Might startle this dull pain, and make it move
            and live!



II

  A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
     A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
     Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
            In word, or sigh, or tear--

  O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood,
  To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,


    All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
  Have I been gazing on the western sky,
    And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
  And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye
  And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
  That give away their motion to the stars;
  Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
  Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen
  Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
  In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
  I see them all so excellently fair,
  I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!



III


    My genial spirits fail;
    And what can these avail
  To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
    It were a vain endeavour,
    Though I should gaze for ever
  On that green light that lingers in the west:
  I may not hope from outward forms to win
  The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.



IV


  O Lady! we receive but what we give,
  And in our life alone does Nature live:
  Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!
    And would we aught behold, of higher worth,
  Than that inanimate cold world allowed
  To the poor loveless, ever-anxious crowd,
    Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
  A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud--
    Enveloping the Earth--
  And from the soul itself must there be sent
    A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
  Of all sweet sounds the life and element!


V


  O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
  What this strong music in the soul may be!
  What, and wherein it doth exist,
  This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
  This beautiful and beauty-making power.
    Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
  Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
  Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
  Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
  Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower,
    A new Earth and new Heaven,
  Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud--
  Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud--
    We in ourselves rejoice!
  And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
    All melodies the echoes of that voice,
  All colours a suffusion from that light.


VI


  There was a time when, though my path was rough,
    This joy within me dallied with distress,
  And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
    Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
  For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
  And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
  But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
  Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth
      But oh! each visitation
  Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,
    My shaping spirit of Imagination.
  For not to think of what I needs must feel,
    But to be still and patient, all I can;
  And haply by abstruse research to steal
    From my own nature all the natural man--
    This was my sole resource, my only plan:
  Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
  And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.


VII


  Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
      Reality's dark dream!
  I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
    Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
  Of agony by torture lengthened out
  That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without,
  Bare crag, or mountain-tairn, or blasted tree,
  Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
  Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
    Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
  Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
  Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers,
  Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,
  The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
    Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
  Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold!
      What tell'st thou now about?
      'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,
    With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds--
  At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!
  But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!
    And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,
  With groans, and tremulous shudderings-all is over--
    It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
      A tale of less affright,
      And tempered with delight,
  As Otway's self had framed the tender lay,
      'Tis of a little child
      Upon a lonesome wild,
  Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:
  And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
  And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.


VIII


  Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep:
  Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!
  Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
    And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
  May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
    Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
      With light heart may she rise,
      Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,
    Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;
  To her may all things live, from pole to pole,
  Their life the eddying of her living soul!
    O simple spirit, guided from above,
  Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,
  Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice.


1802.




ODE TO TRANQUILLITY


  Tranquility! thou better name
  Than all the family of Fame!
  Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
  To low intrigue, or factious rage;
      For oh! dear child of thoughtful Truth,
      To thee I gave my early youth,
  And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore,
  Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.

      Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
      On him but seldom, Power divine,
      Thy spirit rests! Satiety
      And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
      Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope
      And dire Remembrance interlope,
  To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
  The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.

      But me thy gentle hand will lead
      At morning through the accustomed mead;
      And in the sultry summer's heat
      Will build me up a mossy seat;
      And when the gust of Autumn crowds,
      And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,
  Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
  Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.

      The feeling heart, the searching soul,
      To thee I dedicate the whole!
      And while within myself I trace
      The greatness of some future race,
      Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
      The present works of present man--
  A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
  Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!

1801.




FRANCE: AN ODE


I

  Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause,
    Whose pathless march no mortal may controul!
    Ye Ocean-Waves! that, wheresoe'er ye roll,
  Yield homage only to eternal laws!
  Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing,
    Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
  Save when your own imperious branches swinging,
    Have made a solemn music of the wind!
  Where, like a man beloved of God,
  Through glooms, which never woodman trod,
    How oft, pursuing fancies holy,
  My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound,
    Inspired, beyond the guess of folly,
  By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound!
  O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high!
    And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!
  Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky!
    Yea, every thing that is and will be free!
    Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be,
  With what deep worship I have still adored
    The spirit of divinest Liberty.

II

  When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared,
    And with that oath, which smote air, earth, and sea,
    Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free,
  Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared!
  With what a joy my lofty gratulation
    Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band:
  And when to whelm the disenchanted nation,
    Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand,
      The Monarchs marched in evil day,
      And Britain join'd the dire array;
    Though dear her shores and circling ocean,
  Though many friendships, many youthful loves
    Had swoln the patriot emotion
  And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves;
  Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat
    To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance,
  And shame too long delay'd and vain retreat!
  For ne'er, O Liberty! with partial aim
  I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy flame;
    But blessed the paeans of delivered France,
  And hung my head and wept at Britain's name.

III

  "And what," I said, "though Blasphemy's loud scream
    With that sweet music of deliverance strove!
    Though all the fierce and drunken passions wove
  A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's dream!
    Ye storms, that round the dawning east assembled,
  The Sun was rising, though ye hid his light!"
    And when, to soothe my soul, that hoped and trembled,
  The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm and bright;
    When France her front deep-scarr'd and gory
    Concealed with clustering wreaths of glory;
    When, insupportably advancing,
  Her arm made mockery of the warrior's ramp;
    While timid looks of fury glancing,
  Domestic treason, crushed beneath her fatal stamp,
  Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore;
    Then I reproached my fears that would not flee;
  "And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach her lore
  In the low huts of them that toil and groan!
  And, conquering by her happiness alone,
    Shall France compel the nations to be free,
  Till Love and Joy look round, and call the Earth their own."

IV

  Forgive me, Freedom! O forgive those dreams!
    I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament,
    From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent--
  I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained streams!
    Heroes, that for your peaceful country perished,
  And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain-snows
    With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that I cherished
    One thought that ever blessed your cruel foes!
    To scatter rage and traitorous guilt
    Where Peace her jealous home had built;
      A patriot-race to disinherit
  Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear;
      And with inexpiable spirit
  To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer--
  O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind,
    And patriot only in pernicious toils!
  Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind?
    To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway,
  Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous prey;
  To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils
    From freemen torn; to tempt and to betray?

V

    The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain,
  Slaves by their own compulsion! In mad game
    They burst their manacles and wear the name
      Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain!
    O Liberty! with profitless endeavour
  Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour;
    But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain, nor ever
  Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power.
    Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee,
    (Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee)
      Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions,
    And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves,
      Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions,
  The guide of homeless winds, and playmate of
      the waves!
  And there I felt thee!--on that sea-cliff's verge,
  Whose pines, scarce travelled by the breeze above,
  Had made one murmur with the distant surge!
  Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
  And shot my being through earth, sea and air,
    Possessing all things with intensest love,
      O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

 _February_ 1798.




FEARS IN SOLITUDE

WRITTEN IN APRIL 1798, DURING THE
ALARM OF AN INVASION


  A Green and silent spot, amid the hills,
  A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place
  No singing sky-lark ever poised himself.
  The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
  Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
  All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
  Which now blooms most profusely: but the dell,
  Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
  As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax,
  When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
  The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
  Oh! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook!
  Which all, methinks, would love; but chiefly he,
  The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
  Knew just so much of folly, as had made
  His early manhood more securely wise!
  Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
  While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
  The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),
  And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
  Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame;
  And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
  Made up a meditative joy, and found
  Religious meanings in the forms of Nature!
  And so, his senses gradually wrapt
  In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
  And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark;
  That singest like an angel in the clouds!

    My God! it is a melancholy thing
  For such a man, who would full fain preserve
  His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
  For all his human brethren--O my God!
  It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
  What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
  This way or that way o'er these silent hills--
  Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
  And all the crash of onset; fear and rage,
  And undetermined conflict--even now,
  Even now, perchance, and in his native isle:
  Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun!
  We have offended, Oh! my countrymen!
  We have offended very grievously,
  And been most tyrannous. From east to west
  A groan of accusation pierces Heaven!
  The wretched plead against us; multitudes
  Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
  Our brethren! Like a cloud that travels on,
  Steam'd up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence,
  Even so, my countrymen! have we gone forth
  And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
  And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
  With slow perdition murders the whole man,
  His body and his soul! Meanwhile, at home,
  All individual dignity and power
  Engulf'd in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
  Associations and Societies,
  A vain, speech-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
  One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
  We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
  Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth;
  Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
  Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life
  For gold, as at a market! The sweet words
  Of Christian promise, words that even yet
  Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
  Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim
  How flat and wearisome they feel their trade:
  Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
  To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
  Oh! blasphemous! the book of life is made
  A superstitious instrument, on which
  We gabble o'er the oaths we mean to break;
  For all must swear--all and in every place,
  College and wharf, council and justice-court;
  All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
   Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
  The rich, the poor, the old man and the young;
  All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
  That faith doth reel; the very name of God
  Sounds like a juggler's charm; and, bold with joy,
  Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
  (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
  Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
  Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close,
  And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
  Cries out, "Where is it?"

  Thankless too for peace,
  (Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
  Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
  To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war!
  Alas! for ages ignorant of all
  Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
  Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
  We, this whole people, have been clamorous
  For war and bloodshed; animating sports,
  The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
  Spectators and not combatants! No guess
  Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
  No speculation on contingency,
  However dim and vague, too vague and dim
  To yield a justifying cause; and forth,
  (Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
  And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
  We send our mandates for the certain death
  Of thousands and ten thousands! Boys and girls,
  And women, that would groan to see a child
  Pull off an insect's leg, all read of war,
  The best amusement for our morning meal!
  The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
  From curses, who knows scarcely words enough
  To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
  Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
  And technical in victories and defeats,
  And all our dainty terms for fratricide;
  Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues
  Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
  We join no feeling and attach no form!
  As if the soldier died without a wound;
  As if the fibres of this godlike frame
  Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch,
  Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
  Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed;
  As though he had no wife to pine for him,
  No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
  Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
  And what if all-avenging Providence,
  Strong and retributive, should make us know
  The meaning of our words, force us to feel
  The desolation and the agony
  Of our fierce doings?

  Spare us yet awhile,
  Father and God! O! spare us yet awhile!
  Oh! let not English women drag their flight
  Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,
  Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
  Laughed at the breast! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
  Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
  Which grew up with you round the same fire-side,
  And all who ever heard the sabbath-bells
  Without the infidel's scorn, make yourselves pure!
  Stand forth! be men! repel an impious foe,
  Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
  Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
  With deeds of murder; and still promising
  Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
  Poison life's amities, and cheat the heart
  Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes
  And all that lifts the spirit! Stand we forth;
  Render them back upon the insulted ocean,
  And let them toss as idly on its waves
  As the vile sea-weed, which some mountain-blast
  Swept from our shores! And oh! may we return
  Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
  Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung
  So fierce a foe to frenzy!

  I have told,
  O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
  Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
  Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed;
  For never can true courage dwell with them,
  Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
  At their own vices. We have been too long
  Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,
  Groaning with restless enmity, expect
  All change from change of constituted power;
  As if a Government had been a robe,
  On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged
  Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
  Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
  A radical causation to a few
  Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
  Who borrow all their hues and qualities
  From our own folly and rank wickedness,
  Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,
  Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
  Who will not fall before their images.
  And yield them worship, they are enemies
  Even of their country!

  Such have I been deemed.--
  But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!
  Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
  To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
  A husband, and a father! who revere
  All bonds of natural love, and find them all
  Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
  O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!
  How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
  To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
  Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
  Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
  All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
  All adoration of the God in nature,
  All lovely and all honourable things,
  Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
  The joy and greatness of its future being?
  There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
  Unborrowed from my country! O divine
  And beauteous island! thou hast been my sole
  And most magnificent temple, in the which
  I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
  Loving the God that made me!--

  May my fears,
  My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts
  And menace of the vengeful enemy
  Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
  In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard
  In this low dell, bow'd not the delicate grass.
  But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
  The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:
  The light has left the summit of the hill,
  Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
  Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
  Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!
  On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
  Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled
  From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
  I find myself upon the brow, and pause
  Startled! And after lonely sojourning
  In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
  This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
  Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty
  Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
  And elmy fields, seems like society--
  Conversing with the mind, and giving it
  A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!
  And now, beloved Stowey! I behold
  Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
  Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;
  And close behind them, hidden from my view,
  Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
  And my babe's mother dwell in peace! With light
  And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
  Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!
  And grateful, that by nature's quietness
  And solitary musings, all my heart
  Is soften'd, and made worthy to indulge
  Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

NETHER STOWEY, _April 2Oth_, 1798.




THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON

ADDRESSED TO CHARLES LAMB, OF THE
INDIA HOUSE, LONDON


In the June of 1797 some long-expected friends paid a visit to the author's
cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident,
which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One
evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following
lines in the garden-bower.

  Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
  This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
  Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
  Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
  Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
  Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
  On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
  Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
  To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
  The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,
  And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
  Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
  Flings arching like a bridge--that branchless ash,
  Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow-leaves
  Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
  Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends
  Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
  That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
  Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
  Of the blue clay-stone.

  Now, my friends emerge
  Beneath the wide wide Heaven--and view again
  The many-steepled tract magnificent
  Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
  With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
  The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
  Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
  In gladness all; but thou, me thinks, most glad,
  My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
  And hungered after Nature, many a year,
  In the great City pent, winning thy way
  With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
  And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
  Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
  Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
  Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds
  Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
  And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
  Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
  Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
  On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
  Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
  As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
  Spirits perceive his presence.

  A delight
  Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
  As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
  This little lime-tree bower, have I not marked
  Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze
  Hung the transparent foliage; and I watched
  Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see
  The shadow of the leaf and stem above,
  Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
  Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay
  Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
  Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass--
  Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
  Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
  Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
  Yet still the solitary humble-bee
  Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
  That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;
  No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
  No waste so vacant, but. may well employ
  Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart.
  Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
  'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,
  That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
  With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
  My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
  Beat its straight path along the dusky air
  Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing
  (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
  Had cross'd the mighty orb's dilated glory,
  While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,
  Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm
  For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
  No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

1797.




TO A GENTLEMAN

[WILLIAM WORDSWORTH]

COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION
OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL
MIND.


  Friend of the wise! and Teacher of the Good!
  Into my heart have I received that Lay
  More than historic, that prophetic Lay
  Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
  Of the foundations and the building up
  Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
  What may be told, to the understanding mind
  Revealable; and what within the mind
  By vital breathings secret as the soul
  Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart
  Thoughts all too deep for words!--

                            Theme hard as high!
  Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears
  (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),
  Of tides obedient to external force,
  And currents self-determined, as might seem,
  Or by some inner Power; of moments awful,
  Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,
  When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received
  The light reflected, as a light bestowed--
  Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,
  Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought
  Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens
  Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!
  Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars
  Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,
  The guides and the companions of thy way!

  Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense
  Distending wide, and man beloved as man,
  Where France in all her towns lay vibrating
  Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst
  Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud
  Is visible, or shadow on the main.
  For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,
  Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,
  Amid a mighty nation jubilant,
  When from the general heart of human kind
  Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!
  --Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,
  So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure
  From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,
  With light unwaning on her eyes, to look
  Far on-herself a glory to behold,
  The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)
  Of Duty, chosen Laws controlling choice,
  Action and joy!--An orphic song indeed,
  A song divine of high and passionate thoughts
  To their own music chaunted!

                                  O great Bard!
  Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,
  With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir
  Of ever-enduring men. The truly great
  Have all one age, and from one visible space
  Shed influence! They, both in power and act,
  Are permanent, and Time is not with _them_,
  Save as it worketh _for_ them, they _in_ it.
  Nor less a sacred Roll, than those of old,
  And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame
  Among the archives of mankind, thy work
  Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,
  Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,
  Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes
  Ah! as I listen'd with a heart forlorn,
  The pulses of my being beat anew:
  And even as life retains upon the drowned,
  Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains--
  Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe
  Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;
  And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;
  And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;
  Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,
  And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;
  And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,
  And all which patient toil had reared, and all,
  Commune with _thee_ had opened out--but flowers
  Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,
  In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!

    That way no more! and ill beseems it me,
  Who came a welcomer in herald's guise,
  Singing of glory, and futurity,
  To wander back on such unhealthful road,
  Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill
  Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths
  Strew'd before _thy_ advancing!

  Nor do thou,
  Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour
  Of thy communion with my nobler mind
  By pity or grief, already felt too long!
  Nor let my words import more blame than needs.
  The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace is nigh
  Where wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.
  Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,
  The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours
  Already on the wing.

  Eve following eve,
  Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home
  Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed
  And more desired, more precious, for thy song,
  In silence listening like a devout child,
  My soul lay passive, by thy various strain
  Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,
  With momentary stars of my own birth,
  Fair constellated foam, still darting off
  Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,
  Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.

  And when--O Friend! my comforter and guide!
  Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!--
  Thy long sustained Song finally closed,
  And thy deep voice had ceased--yet thou thyself
  Wert still before my eyes, and round us both
  That happy vision of beloved faces--
  Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close
  I sate, my being blended in one thought
  (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)
  Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound--
  And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

_January_ 1807.




HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE, IN THE
VALE OF CHAMOUNI


Besides the Rivers, Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot
of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and within a
few paces of the Glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers,
with its "flowers of loveliest blue."

  Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
  In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
  On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC!
  The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
  Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
  Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
  How silently! Around thee and above
  Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
  An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
  As with a wedge! But when I look again,
  It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
  Thy habitation from eternity!
  O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
  Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
  Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
  I worshipped the Invisible alone.

    Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
  So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
  Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
  Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:
  Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
  Into the mighty vision passing--there
  As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

    Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
  Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
  Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
  Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
  Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.

    Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
  O struggling with the darkness all the night,
  And visited all night by troops of stars,
  Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
  Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
  Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
  Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!
  Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
  Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
  Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

    And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
  Who called you forth from night and utter death,
  From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
  Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
  For ever shattered and the same for ever?
  Who gave you your invulnerable life,
  Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy.
  Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
  And who commanded (and the silence came),
  Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

    Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
  Adown enormous ravines slope amain--
  Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
  And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
  Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
  Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
  Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
  Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
  Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
  GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
  Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
  GOD! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!
  Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
  And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
  And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!

    Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
  Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
  Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
  Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
  Ye signs and wonders of the element!
  Utter forth GOD, and fill the hills with praise!

    Thou too; hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
  Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,
  Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
  Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast--
  Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
  That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
  In adoration, upward from thy base
  Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
  Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
  To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
  Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
  Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
  Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
  Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
  And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
  Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.

1802




FROST AT MIDNIGHT


  The Frost performs its secret ministry,
  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry
  Came loud--and hark, again! loud as before.
  The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
  Have left me to that solitude, which suits
  Abstruser musings: save that at my side
  My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
  'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
  And vexes meditation with its strange
  And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
  This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
  With all the numberless goings-on of life,
  Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
  Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
  Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
  Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
  Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
  Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
  Making it a companionable form,
  Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
  By its own moods interprets, every where
  Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
  And makes a toy of Thought.

                              But O! how oft,
  How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
  Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
  To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
  With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
  Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
  Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang
  From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
  So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
  With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
  Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
  So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
  Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
  And so I brooded all the following morn,
  Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
  Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
  Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
  A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
  For still I hoped to see the _stranger's_ face,
  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
  My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

    Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
  Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
  Fill up the interspersed vacancies
  And momentary pauses of the thought!
  My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
  With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
  And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
  And in far other scenes! For I was reared
  In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
  And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
  But _thou_, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
  By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
  Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
  Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
  And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
  The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
  Of that eternal language, which thy God
  Utters, who from eternity doth teach
  Himself in all, and all things in himself.
  Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
  Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

  Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
  Whether the summer clothe the general earth
  With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
  Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
  Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
  Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall
  Heard only in the trances of the blast,
  Or if the secret ministry of frost
  Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
  Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

    _February_ 1798.




THE NIGHTINGALE

A CONVERSATION POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL 1798


  No cloud, no relique of the sunken day
  Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip
  Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.
  Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!
  You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,
  Bur* hear no murmuring: it flows silently,
  O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,
  A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,
  Yet let us think upon the vernal showers
  That gladden the green earth, and we shall find
  A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.
  And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,
  "Most musical, most melancholy" bird!
  A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!
  In Nature there is nothing melancholy.
  But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced
  With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,
  Or slow distemper, or neglected love,
  (And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself,
  And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
  Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,
  First named these notes a melancholy strain.
  And many a poet echoes the conceit;
  Poet who hath been building up the rhyme
  When he had better far have stretched his limbs
  Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,
  By sun or moon-light, to the influxes
  Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements
  Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
  And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
  Should share in Nature's immortality,
  A venerable thing! and so his song
  Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself
  Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;
  And youths and maidens most poetical,
  Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring
  In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
  Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
  O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.

  My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt
  A different lore: we may not thus profane
  Nature's sweet voices, always full of love
  And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale
  That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates
  With fast thick warble his delicious notes,
  As he were fearful that an April night
  Would be too short for him to utter forth
  His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
  Of all its music!

  And I know a grove
  Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
  Which the great lord inhabits not; and so
  This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
  And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
  Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
  But never elsewhere in one place I knew
  So many nightingales; and far and near,
  In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,
  They answer and provoke each other's songs,
  With skirmish and capricious passagings,
  And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,
  And one low piping sound more sweet than all--
  Stirring the air with such an harmony,
  That should you close your eyes, you might almost
  Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,
  Whose dewy leaflets are but half-disclosed,
  You may perchance behold them on the twigs,
  Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,
  Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade
  Lights up her love-torch.

                            A most gentle Maid,
  Who dwelleth in her hospitable home
  Hard by the castle, and at latest eve
  (Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate
  To something more than Nature in the grove)
  Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,
  That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,
  What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
  Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon
  Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
  With one sensation, and those wakeful birds
  Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,
  As if some sudden gale had swept at once
  A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
  Many a nightingale perch giddily
  On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,
  And to that motion tune his wanton song
  Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

    Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,
  And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
  We have been loitering long and pleasantly,
  And now for our dear homes.--That strain again!
  Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
  Who, capable of no articulate sound,
  Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
  How he would place his hand beside his ear,
  His little hand, the small forefinger up,
  And bid us listen! And I deem it wise
  To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well
  The evening-star; and once, when he awoke
  In most distressful mood (some inward pain
  Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream),
  I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,
  And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,
  Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,
  While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped
  tears,
  Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!--
  It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven
  Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
  Familiar with these songs, that with the night
  He may associate joy.--Once more, farewell,
  Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends!
  farewell.




THE EOLIAN HARP

COMPOSED AT CLEVEDON, SOMERSETSHIRE


  My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined
  Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is
  To sit beside our cot, our cot o'ergrown
  With white-flowered Jasmin, and the broad-leaved
  Myrtle,
  (Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!),
  And watch the clouds, that late were rich with
  light,
  Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve
  Serenely brilliant (such should wisdom be)
  Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents
  Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world
  so hushed!

  The stilly murmur of the distant sea
  Tells us of silence.

  And that simplest lute,
  Placed length-ways in the clasping casement,
      hark!
  How by the desultory breeze caressed,
  Like some coy maid half yielding to her lover,
  It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs
  Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its
  strings
  Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes
  Over delicious surges sink and rise,
  Such a soft floating witchery of sound
  As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
  Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
  Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
  Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,
  Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed
  wing!
  O! the one life within us and abroad,
  Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
  A light in sound, a sound-like power in light
  Rhythm in all thought, and joyance every
  where--
  Methinks, it should have been impossible
  Not to love all things in a world so filled;
  Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still
  air
  In Music slumbering on her instrument.

  And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
  Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
  Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold
  The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,
  And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
  Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
  And many idle flitting phantasies,
  Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
  As wild and various as the random gales
  That swell and flutter on this subject lute!

  And what if all of animated nature
  Be but organic harps diversely framed,
  That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
  Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
  At once the Soul of each, and God of all?

  But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
  Darts, O beloved woman! nor such thoughts
  Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject,
  And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
  Meek daughter in the family of Christ!
  Well hast thou said and holily dispraised
  These shapings of the unregenerate mind;
  Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
  On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring.
  For never guiltless may I speak of him,
  The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
  I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
  Who with his saving mercies healed me,
  A sinful and most miserable man,
  Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess
  Peace, and this cot, and thee, dear honoured
  Maid!

1795.




THE PICTURE

OR THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION


  Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood
  I force my way; now climb, and now descend
  O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot
  Crushing the purple whorts;[1] while oft unseen,
  Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves,
  The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil,
  I know not, ask not whither! A new joy,
  Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust,
  And gladsome as the first-born of the spring,
  Beckons me on, or follows from behind,
  Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quelled,
  I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark
  The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak,
  Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake
  Soar up, and form a melancholy vault
  High o'er me, murmuring like a distant sea.
  Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse;
  Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul,
  And of this busy human heart aweary,
  Worships the spirit of unconscious life
  In tree or wild-flower.--Gentle lunatic!
  If so he might not wholly cease to be,
  He would far rather not be that he is;
  But would be something that he knows not of,
  In winds or waters, or among the rocks!

  But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion
  here!
  No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves
  Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood
  He should stray hither, the low stumps shall
  gore
  His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn
  Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded
  bird
  Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs,
  Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades!
  And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at
  morn
  The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs!
  You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between
  The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze,
  Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon,
  The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed--
  Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp,
  Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb.
  Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes!
  With prickles sharper than his darts bemock
  His little Godship, making him perforce
  Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's
  back.

  This is my hour of triumph! I can now
  With my own fancies play the merry fool,
  And laugh away worse folly, being free.
  Here will I seat myself, beside this old,
  Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine
  Clothes as with net-work: here will couch my limbs,
  Close by this river, in this silent shade,
  As safe and sacred from the step of man
  As an invisible world--unheard, unseen,
  And listening only to the pebbly brook
  That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound;
  Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk
  Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me,
  Was never Love's accomplice, never raised
  The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow,
  And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek;
  Ne'er played the wanton--never half disclosed
  The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence
  Eye-poisons for some love-distempered youth,
  Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove
  Shiver in sunshine, but his feeble heart
  Shall flow away like a dissolving thing.

  Sweet breeze! thou only, if I guess aright,
  Liftest the feathers of the robin's breast,
  That swells its little breast, so full of song,
  Singing above me, on the mountain-ash.
  And thou too, desert stream! no pool of thine,
  Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve,
  Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe,
  The face, the form divine, the downcast look
  Contemplative! Behold! her open palm
  Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests
  On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree,
  That leans towards its mirror! Who erewhile
  Had from her countenance turned, or looked by stealth
  (For fear is true-love's cruel nurse), he now
  With steadfast gaze and unoffending eye,
  Worships the watery idol, dreaming hopes
  Delicious to the soul, but fleeting, vain,
  E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed,
  But not unheeded gazed: for see, ah! see,
  The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks
  The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow,
  Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove bells:
  And suddenly, as one that toys with time,
  Scatters them on the pool! Then all the charm
  Is broken--all that phantom world so fair
  Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
  And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile,
  Poor youth, who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes!

  The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
  The visions will return! And lo! he stays:
  And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
  Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
  The pool becomes a mirror; and behold
  Each wildflower on the marge inverted there,
  And there the half-uprooted tree--but where,
  O where the virgin's snowy arm, that leaned
  On its bare branch? He turns, and she is gone!
  Homeward she steals through many a woodland maze
  Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth!
  Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime
  In mad love-yearning by the vacant brook,
  Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou
  Behold'st her shadow still abiding there,
  The Naiad of the mirror!

  Not to thee,
  O wild and desert stream! belongs this tale:
  Gloomy and dark art thou-the crowded firs
  Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed,
  Making thee doleful as a cavern-well:
  Save when the shy king-fishers build their nest
  On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, wild stream!

  This be my chosen haunt--emancipate
  From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone,
  I rise and trace its devious course. O lead,
  Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms.
  Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs,
  How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock,
  Isle of the river, whose disparted waves
  Dart off asunder with an angry sound,
  How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet,
  Each in the other lost and found: and see
  Placeless, as spirits, one soft water-sun
  Throbbing within them, heart at once and eye!
  With its soft neighbourhood of filmy clouds,
  The stains and shadings of forgotten tears,
  Dimness o'erswum with lustre! Such the hour
  Of deep enjoyment, following love's brief feuds;
  And hark, the noise of a near waterfall!
  I pass forth into light--I find myself
  Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful
  Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods),
  Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock
  That overbrows the cataract. How burst?
  The landscape on my sight! Two crescent hills
  Fold in behind each other, and so make
  A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem,
  With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages,
  Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my feet,
  The whortle-berries are bedewed with spray,
  Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall.
  How solemnly the pendent ivy-mass
  Swings in its winnow: All the air is calm.
  The smoke from cottage-chimneys, tinged with light,
  Rises in columns; from this house alone,
  Close by the waterfall, the column slants,
  And feels its ceaseless breeze. But what is this?
  That cottage, with its slanting chimney-smoke,
  And close beside its porch a sleeping child,
  His dear head pillow'd on a sleeping dog--
  One arm between its fore-legs, and the hand
  Holds loosely its small handful of wildflowers,
  Unfilletted, and of unequal lengths.
  A curious picture, with a master's haste
  Sketched on a strip of pinky-silver skin,
  Peeled from the birchen bark! Divinest maid!
  Yon bark her canvas, and those purple berries
  Her pencil! See, the juice is scarcely dried
  On the fine skin! She has been newly here;
  And lo! yon patch of heath has been her couch--
  The pressure still remains! O blessed couch!
  For this may'st thou flower early, and the sun,
  Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long
  Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel!
  Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids!
  More beautiful than whom Alcæus wooed,
  The Lesbian woman of immortal song!
  O child of genius! stately, beautiful,
  And full of love to all, save only me,
  And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart,
  Why beats it thus? Through yonder coppicewood
  Needs must the pathway turn, that leads straightway
  On to her father's house. She is alone!
  The night draws on-such ways are hard to hit--
  And fit it is I should restore this sketch,
  Dropt unawares no doubt. Why should I yearn
  To keep the relique? 'twill but idly feed
  The passion that consumes me. Let me haste!
  The picture in my hand which she has left;
  She cannot blame me that I follow'd her:
  And I may be her guide the long wood through.

1802.

[Footnote 1: _Vaccinium Myrtillus_ known by the different names of
Whorts, Whortle-berries, Bilberries; and in the North of England,
Blea-berries and Bloom-berries. [Note by S. T. C. 1802.]]




THE GARDEN OF BOCCACCIO


  Of late, in one of those most weary hours,
  When life seems emptied of all genial powers,
  A dreary mood, which he who ne'er has known
  May bless his happy lot, I sate alone;
  And, from the numbing spell to win relief,
  Call'd on the Past for thought of glee or grief.
  In vain! bereft alike of grief and glee,
  I sate and cow'r'd o'er my own vacancy!
  And as I watch'd the dull continuous ache,
  Which, all else slum'bring, seem'd alone to wake;
  O Friend! long wont to notice yet conceal,
  And soothe by silence what words cannot heal,
  I but half saw that quiet hand of thine
  Place on my desk this exquisite design.
  Boccaccio's Garden and its faery,
  The love, the joyaunce, and the gallantry!
  An Idyll, with Boccaccio's spirit warm,
  Framed in the silent poesy of form.
  Like flocks adown a newly-bathed steep
    Emerging from a mist: or like a stream
  Of music soft that not dispels the sleep,
    But casts in happier moulds the slumberer's dream,
  Gazed by an idle eye with silent might
  The picture stole upon my inward sight.
  A tremulous warmth crept gradual o'er my chest,
  As though an infant's finger touch'd my breast.
  And one by one (I know not whence) were brought
  All spirits of power that most had stirr'd my thought
  In selfless boyhood, on a new world tost
  Of wonder, and in its own fancies lost;
  Or charm'd my youth, that, kindled from above,
  Loved ere it loved, and sought a form for love;
  Or lent a lustre to the earnest scan
  Of manhood, musing what and whence is man!
  Wild strain of Scalds, that in the sea-worn caves
  Rehearsed their war-spell to the winds and waves;
  Or fateful hymn of those prophetic maids,
  That call'd on Hertha in deep forest glades;
  Or minstrel lay, that cheer'd the baron's feast;
  Or rhyme of city pomp, of monk and priest,
  Judge, mayor, and many a guild in long array,
  To high-church pacing on the great saint's day.
  And many a verse which to myself I sang,
  That woke the tear yet stole away the pang,
  Of hopes which in lamenting I renew'd.
  And last, a matron now, of sober mien,
  Yet radiant still and with no earthly sheen,
  Whom as a faery child my childhood woo'd
  Even in my dawn of thought--Philosophy;
  Though then unconscious of herself, pardie,
  She bore no other name than Poesy;
  And, like a gift from heaven, in lifeful glee,
  That had but newly left a mother's knee,
  Prattled and play'd with bird and flower, and stone,
  As if with elfin playfellows well known,
  And life reveal'd to innocence alone.

  Thanks, gentle artist! now I can descry
  Thy fair creation with a mastering eye,
  And _all_ awake! And now in fix'd gaze stand,
  Now wander through the Eden of thy hand;
  Praise the green arches, on the fountain clear
  See fragment shadows of the crossing deer;
  And with that serviceable nymph I stoop
  The crystal from its restless pool to scoop.
  I see no longer! I myself am there,
  Sit on the ground-sward, and the banquet share.
  'Tis I, that sweep that lute's love-echoing strings,
  And gaze upon the maid who gazing sings;
  Or pause and listen to the tinkling bells
  From the high tower, and think that there she dwells.
  With old Boccaccio's soul I stand possest,
  And breathe an air like life, that swells my chest.
  The brightness of the world, O thou once free,
  And always fair, rare land of courtesy!
  O Florence! with the Tuscan fields and hills
  And famous Arno, fed with all their rills;
  Thou brightest star of star-bright Italy!
  Rich, ornate, populous, all treasures thine,
  The golden corn, the olive, and the vine.
  Fair cities, gallant mansions, castles old,
  And forests, where beside his leafy hold
  The sullen boar hath heard the distant horn,
  And whets his tusks against the gnarled thorn;
  Palladian palace with its storied halls;
  Fountains, where Love lies listening to their falls;
  Gardens, where flings the bridge its airy span,
  And Nature makes her happy home with man;
  Where many a gorgeous flower is duly fed
  With its own rill, on its own spangled bed,
  And wreathes the marble urn, or leans its head,
  A mimic mourner, that with veil withdrawn
  Weeps liquid gems, the presents of the dawn;--
  Thine all delights, and every muse is thine;
  And more than all, the embrace and intertwine
  Of all with all in gay and twinkling dance!
  Mid gods of Greece and warriors of romance,
  See! Boccace sits, unfolding on his knees
  The new-found roll of old Maeonides;
  But from his mantle's fold, and near the heart,
  Peers Ovid's Holy Book of Love's sweet smart!

  O all-enjoying and all-blending sage,
  Long be it mine to con thy mazy page,
  Where, half conceal'd, the eye of fancy views
  Fauns, nymphs, and winged saints, all gracious to thy muse!

  Still in thy garden let me watch their pranks,
  And see in Dian's vest between the ranks
  Of the trim vines, some maid that half believes
  The _vestal_ fires, of which her lover grieves,
  With that sly satyr peeping through the leaves!

1828.




THE TWO FOUNTS

STANZAS ADDRESSED TO A LADY [MRS. ADERS] ON
HER RECOVERY WITH UNBLEMISHED LOOKS,
FROM A SEVERE ATTACK OF PAIN


  'T was my last waking thought, how it could be
  That thou, sweet friend, such anguish should'st endure;
  When straight from Dreamland came a Dwarf, and he
  Could tell the cause, forsooth, and knew the cure.
  Methought he fronted me with peering look
  Fix'd on my heart; and read aloud in game
  The loves and griefs therein, as from a book:
  And uttered praise like one who wished to blame.

  In every heart (quoth he) since Adam's sin
  Two Founts there are, of Suffering and of Cheer!
  _That_ to let forth, and _this_ to keep within!
  But she, whose aspect I find imaged here,

  Of Pleasure only will to all dispense,
  _That_ Fount alone unlock, by no distress
  Choked or turned inward, but still issue thence
  Unconquered cheer, persistent loveliness.

  As on the driving cloud the shiny bow,
  That gracious thing made up of tears and light,
  Mid the wild rack and rain that slants below
  Stands smiling forth, unmoved and freshly bright:

  As though the spirits of all lovely flowers,
  Inweaving each its wreath and dewy crown,
  Or ere they sank to earth in vernal showers,
  Had built a bridge to tempt the angels down.

  Even so, Eliza! on that face of thine,
  On that benignant face, whose look alone
  (The soul's translucence thro' her crystal shrine!)
  Has power to soothe all anguish but thine own,

  A beauty hovers still, and ne'er takes wing,
  But with a silent charm compels the stern
  And tort'ring Genius of the bitter spring,
  To shrink aback, and cower upon his urn.

  Who then needs wonder, if (no outlet found
  In passion, spleen, or strife) the Fount of Pain
  O'erflowing beats against its lovely mound,
  And in wild flashes shoots from heart to brain?

  Sleep, and the Dwarf with that unsteady gleam
  On his raised lip, that aped a critic smile,
  Had passed: yet I, my sad thoughts to beguile,
  Lay weaving on the tissue of my dream;

  Till audibly at length I cried, as though
  Thou hadst indeed been present to my eyes,
  O sweet, sweet sufferer; if the case be so,
  I pray thee, be _less_ good, _less_ sweet, _less_ wise!

  In every look a barbed arrow send,
  On those soft lips let scorn and anger live!
  Do _any_ thing, rather than thus, sweet friend!
  Hoard for thyself the pain, thou wilt not give!

1826.




A DAY-DREAM


  My eyes make pictures, when they are shut:
    I see a fountain, large and fair,
  A willow and a ruined hut,
    And thee, and me and Mary there.
  O Mary! make thy gentle lap our pillow!
  Bend o'er us, like a bower, my beautiful green willow!

    A wild-rose roofs the ruined shed,
      And that and summer well agree:
    And lo! where Mary leans her head,
      Two dear names carved upon the tree!
  And Mary's tears, they are not tears of sorrow:
  Our sister and our friend will both be here tomorrow.

    'Twas day! but now few, large, and bright,
      The stars are round the crescent moon!
    And now it is a dark warm night,
      The balmiest of the month of June!
  A glow-worm fall'n, and on the marge remounting
  Shines, and its shadow shines, fit stars for our sweet fountain.

    O ever--ever be thou blest!
      For dearly, Asra! love I thee!
    This brooding warmth across my breast,
      This depth of tranquil bliss--ah, me!
  Fount, tree and shed are gone, I know not whither,
  But in one quiet room we three are still together.

    The shadows dance upon the wall,
      By the still dancing fire-flames made;
    And now they slumber moveless all!
      And now they melt to one deep shade!
  But not from me shall this mild darkness steal thee;
  I dream thee with mine eyes, and at my heart I feel thee!

    Thine eyelash on my cheek doth play--
     'Tis Mary's hand upon my brow!
    But let me check this tender lay
     Which none may hear but she and thou!
  Like the still hive at quiet midnight humming,
  Murmur it to yourselves, ye two beloved women!

?1807.




SONNET

TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN
THE NURSE FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO
ME


  Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
    I scanned that face of feeble infancy:
  For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
    All I had been, and all my child might be!
  But when I saw it on its mother's arm,
    And hanging at her bosom (she the while
    Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile)
  Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
  Impressed a father's kiss: and all beguiled
    Of dark remembrance and presageful fear,
    I seemed to see an angel-form appear--
  'Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!
    So for the mother's sake the child was dear,
  And dearer was the mother for the child.

1796.




LINES TO W. LINLEY, ESQ.

WHILE HE SANG A SONG TO PURCELL'S MUSIC


  While my young cheek retains its healthful hues,
    And I have many friends who hold me dear,
    Linley! methinks, I would not often hear
  Such melodies as thine, lest I should lose
  All memory of the wrongs and sore distress
    For which my miserable brethren weep!
    But should uncomforted misfortunes steep
  My daily bread in tears and bitterness;
  And if at death's dread moment I should lie
    With no beloved face at my bed-side,
  To fix the last glance of my closing eye,
    Methinks such strains, breathed by my angel-guide,
  Would make me pass the cup of anguish by,
    Mix with the blest, nor know that I had died!

1797.




DOMESTIC PEACE

[FROM THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE, ACT I.]


  Tell me, on what holy ground
  May Domestic Peace be found?
  Halcyon daughter of the skies,
  Far on fearful wings she flies,
  From the pomp of Sceptered State,
  From the Rebel's noisy hate.
  In a cottaged vale She dwells,
  Listening to the Sabbath bells!
  Still around her steps are seen
  Spotless Honour's meeker mien,
  Love, the sire of pleasing fears,
  Sorrow smiling through her tears,
  And conscious of the past employ
  Memory, bosom-spring of joy.

1794.




SONG

SUNG BY GLYCINE IN _ZAPOLYA_, ACT II. SCENE 2.


  A Sunny shaft did I behold,
    From sky to earth it slanted:
  And poised therein a bird so bold--
    Sweet bird, thou wert enchanted!

  He sunk, he rose, he twinkled, he trolled
    Within that shaft of sunny mist;
  His eyes of fire, his beak of gold,
    All else of amethyst!

  And thus he sang: "Adieu! adieu!
  Love's dreams prove seldom true.
  The blossoms they make no delay:
  The sparkling dew-drops will not stay.
      Sweet month of May,
        We must away;
          Far, far away!
            To-day! to-day!"

1815.




HUNTING SONG

[_ZAPOLYA_, ACT IV. SCENE 2]


  Up, up! ye dames, and lasses gay!
  To the meadows trip away.
  'Tis you must tend the flocks this morn,
  And scare the small birds from the corn.
      Not a soul at home may stay:
        For the shepherds must go
        With lance and bow
      To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.

  Leave the hearth and leave the house
  To the cricket and the mouse:
  Find grannam out a sunny seat,
  With babe and lambkin at her feet.
    Not a soul at home may stay:
      For the shepherds must go
      With lance and bow
    To hunt the wolf in the woods to-day.

1815.




WESTPHALIAN SONG

[The following is an almost literal translation of a very old and very
favourite song among the Westphalian Boors. The turn at the end is the same
with one of Mr. Dibdin's excellent songs, and the air to which it is sung
by the Boors is remarkably sweet and lively.]


  When thou to my true-love com'st
    Greet her from me kindly;
  When she asks thee how I fare?
    Say, folks in Heaven fare finely.

  When she asks, "What! Is he sick?"
    Say, dead!--and when for sorrow
  She begins to sob and cry,
    Say, I come to-morrow.

?1799.




YOUTH AND AGE


  Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,
  Where Hope clung feeding, like a bee--
  Both were mine! Life went a-maying
        With Nature, Hope, and Poesy,
              When I was young!

  _When_ I was young?--Ah, woeful When!
  Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!
  This breathing house not built with hands,
  This body that does me grievous wrong,
  O'er aery cliffs and glittering sands,
  How lightly _then_ it flashed along:--
  Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore,
  On winding lakes and rivers wide,
  That ask no aid of sail or oar,
  That fear no spite of wind or tide!
  Nought cared this body for wind or weather
  When Youth and I lived in't together.

  Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like;
  Friendship is a sheltering tree;
  O! the joys, that came down shower-like,
  Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty,
                             Ere I was old!

  _Ere_ I was old? Ah woeful Ere,
  Which tells me, Youth's no longer here!
  O Youth! for years so many and sweet,
  'Tis known, that Thou and I were one,
  I'll think it but a fond conceit--
  It cannot be that Thou art gone!
  Thy vesper-bell hath not yet toll'd:-
  And thou wert aye a masker bold!
  What strange disguise hast now put on,
  To _make believe_, that thou art gone?

  I see these locks in silvery slips,
  This drooping gait, this altered size:
  But Spring-tide blossoms on thy lips,
  And tears take sunshine from thine eyes!
  Life is but thought: so think I will
  That Youth and I are house-mates still.

  Dew-drops are the gems of morning,
  But the tears of mournful eve!
  Where no hope is, life's a warning
  That only serves to make us grieve,
                           When we are old:
  That only serves to make us grieve
  With oft and tedious taking-leave,
  Like some poor nigh-related guest,
  That may not rudely be dismist;
  Yet hath outstay'd his welcome while,
  And tells the jest without the smile.

1823-1832.




WORK WITHOUT HOPE

LINES COMPOSED 2IST FEBRUARY 1827


  All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
  The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
  And Winter, slumbering in the open air,
  Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
  And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
  Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
  Yet well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
  Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
  Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
  For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
  With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
  And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
  Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
  And Hope without an object cannot live.

1827.




TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY

AN ALLEGORY


  On the wide level of a mountain's head,
  (I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
  Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
  Two lovely children run an endless race,
        A sister and a brother!
        This far outstript the other;
    Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
    And looks and listens for the boy behind:
        For he, alas! is blind!
  O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
  And knows not whether he be first or last.

1815.




LOVE'S APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT

AN ALLEGORIC ROMANCE


      Like a lone Arab, old and blind,
      Some caravan had left behind,
      Who sits beside a ruin'd well,
      Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell;
  And now he hangs his aged head aslant,
  And listens for a human sound--in vain!
  And now the aid, which Heaven alone can grant,
  Upturns his eyeless face from Heaven to gain;--
  Even thus, in vacant mood, one sultry hour,
  Resting my eye upon a drooping plant,
  With brow low-bent, within my garden-bower,
  I sate upon the couch of camomile;
  And--whether 'twas a transient sleep, perchance,
  Flitted across the idle brain, the while
  I watch'd the sickly calm with aimless scope,
  In my own heart; or that, indeed a trance,
  Turn'd my eye inward--thee, O genial Hope,
  Love's elder sister! thee did I behold,
  Drest as a bridesmaid, but all pale and cold,
  With roseless cheek, all pale and cold and dim,
    Lie lifeless at my feet!
  And then came Love, a sylph in bridal trim,
    And stood beside my seat;
  She bent, and kiss'd her sister's lips,
    As she was wont to do;--
  Alas! 'twas but a chilling breath
  Woke just enough of life in death
    To make Hope die anew.




L'ENVOY


  In vain we supplicate the Powers above;
  There is no resurrection for the Love
  That, nursed in tenderest care, yet fades away
  In the chill'd heart by gradual self-decay.

1833.




LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION


  O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule,
  And sun thee in the light of happy faces;
  Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
  And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
  For as old Atlas on his broad neck places
  Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it;--so
  Do these upbear the little world below
  Of Education,--Patience, Love, and Hope.
  Methinks, I see them group'd in seemly show,
  The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope,
  And robes that touching as adown they flow,
  Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow.
  O part them never! If Hope prostrate lie,
              Love too will sink and die.
  But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive
  From her own life that Hope is yet alive;
  And bending o'er, with soul-transfusing eyes,
  And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,
  Wooes back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies;--
  Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love.
  Yet haply there will come a weary day,
              When overtask'd at length
  Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
  Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
  Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth,
  And both supporting does the work of both.

1829.




DUTY SURVIVING SELF-LOVE

THE ONLY SURE FRIEND OF DECLINING LIFE
A SOLILOQUY


  Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
  Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
  Yet why at others' wanings should'st thou fret?
  Then only might'st thou feel a just regret,
  Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
  In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
  O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
  _While_, and _on whom_, thou may'st--shine on! nor heed
  Whether the object by reflected light
  Return thy radiance or absorb it quite:
  And though thou notest from thy safe recess
  Old friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
  Love them for what they _are_; nor love them less,
  Because to _thee_ they are not what they _were_.

1826.




LOVE'S FIRST HOPE


  O Fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind!
  As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping;
  And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,
  O'er willowy meads, and shadow'd waters creeping,
  And Ceres' golden fields;--the sultry hind
  Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping.

?1824.




PHANTOM


  All look and likeness caught from earth,
  All accident of kin and birth,
  Had pass'd away. There was no trace
  Of aught on that illumined face,
  Upraised beneath the rifted stone,
  But of one spirit all her own;--
  She, s

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