"A SENSE O'ER ALL MY SOUL IMPREST THAT I AM WEAK, YET NOT UNBLEST,-(COLERIDGE)

'THE BUOYANT CHILD SURVIVING IN THE MAN."-S. T. COLERIDGE.

124

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

SINCE IN ME, ROUND ME, EVERYWHERE, ETERNAL STRENGTH AND WISDOM ARE."-COLERIDGE.

["When thou dartest from the wide-rent cloud."]

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.
ILD splendour of the various-
vested night!

Mother of wildly-working
visions hail!

I watch thy gliding, while with
watery light

Thy weak eye glimmers through a fleecy veil ;

FAITH IS LOVE'S WORLD, HIS HOME, HIS BIRTH-PLACE."-COLERIDGE.

"I MAY NOT HOPE FROM OUTWARD FORMS TO WIN, THE PASSION-COLERIDGE)

WORK WITHOUT HOPE DRAWS NECTAR IN A SIEVE,-(COLERIDGE)

And thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gathered blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wide-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awakened sky.
Ah, such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-winged Despair;
But soon emerging, in her radiant might
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

[From Coleridge's "Poetical Works."]

AND THE LIFE, WHOSE FOUNTAINS ARE WITHIN.SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

CALM ON THE OCEAN.

OWN dropped the breeze, the sails dropped
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, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

AND HOPE WITHOUT AN OBJECT CANNOT LIVE."-S. T. COLERIDGE,

"THE KNIGHT'S BONES ARE DUST, HIS GOOD SWORD RUST; HIS SOUL IS WITH THE SAINTS, I TRUST."-COLERIDGE.

OURS IS THE REPTILE'S LOT, MUCH TOIL, MUCH BLAME,

"TRANQUILLITY! THOU BETTER NAME THAN ALL THE FAMILY OF FAME!"-SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

"LOVE'S DESPAIR IS BUT HOPE'S PINING GHOST !"-COLERIDGE.

PARTED FRIENDS.

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.

127

[From "The Ancient Mariner," Parts ii., iii.-"Of all our writers of the briefer narrative poetry, Coleridge is the finest since Chaucer; and assuredly he is the sweetest of all our poets. Waller's music is but a courtflourish in comparison; and though Beaumont and Fletcher, Collins, Gray, Keats, Shelley, and others, have several as sweet passages, and Spenser is in a certain sense musical throughout, yet no man has written whole poems, of equal length, so perfect in the sentiment of music, so varied with it, and yet leaving on the ear so unbroken and single an effect."—Leigh

Hunt.]

"FOR SHE BELIKE HATH DRUNKEN DEEP OF ALL THE BLESSEDNESS OF sleep."-COLERIDGE.

PARTED FRIENDS.

LAS! 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 on the brain.
And thus it chanced, as I divine,
With Roland and Sir Leoline.
Each spoke 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,

66 DREAMING HOPES, DELICIOUS TO THE SOUL."-S. T. COLERIDGE.

"AN ORPHAN'S CURSE WOULD DRAG TO HELL A SPIRIT FROM ON HIGH."-S. T. COLERIDGE.

"O HAPPY LIVING THINGS! NO TONGUE THEIR BEAUTY MIGHT DECLARE."-COLERIDGE.

128

THE STAINS AND SHADINGS OF FORGOTTEN TEARS."-COLERidge,

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been.

to

[From "Christabel." "It would be hard," says Professor Shairp, analyze the strange witchery in Christabel;' the language so simple and natural, yet so aërially musical, the rhythm so original, yet so fitted to the story, and the glamour over all, a glamour so peculiar to this one poem."]

KUBLA KHAN; OR, A VISION IN A DREAM.

A FRAGMENT.

[Coleridge relates that, having been reading a passage in Purchas's "Pilgrims," an old and quaint book of travels, he fell asleep; and during his sleep he composed a poem of several hundreds of lines, which were fresh in his memory when he awoke. Unfortunately he did not begin to transcribe them until some hours later, and all he could then remember was the following beautiful fragment. We may add that this psychological phenomenon is not uncommon.]

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 there 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,

IN NATURE THERE IS NOTHING MELANCHOLY."-S. T. COLERIDGE,

"TO BE BELOVED IS ALL I NEED, AND WHOM I LOVE I LOVE INDEED."-s. T. Coleridge.