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On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality

Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, 120 A Presence which is not to be put by;

Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height, Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 125 Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight, And custom lie upon thee with a weight, Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

130

IX.

O joy! that in our embers
Is something that doth live,
That nature yet remembers
What was so fugitive!

The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction: not indeed

135 For that which is most worthy to be blest Delight and liberty, the simple creed

140

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast: Not for these I raise

The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings
Of sense and outward things,
Fallings from us, vanishings;

Blank misgivings of a Creature

145 Moving about in worlds not realised,

150

High instincts before which our mortal Nature
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised:
But for those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing;

Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
155 Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake,

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160 Can utterly abolish or destroy!

165

170

Hence in a season of calm weather

Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,

And see the Children sport upon the shore,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.

X.

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound

As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,

Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

176 What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,

180

185

Though nothing can bring back the hour

Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI.

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

190 I only have relinquished one delight

195

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;

Another race hath been, and other palms are won. ××
200 Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Herrig-Forster, British Authors.

23

SCHILL.

[Comp. 1809-publ. 1815]

Brave Schill! by death delivered, take thy flight
From Prussia's timid region. Go, and rest
With heroes, 'mid the islands of the Blest,
Or in the fields of empyrean light.

5 A meteor wert thou crossing a dark night:
Yet shall thy name, conspicuous and sublime,
Stand in the spacious firmament of time,
Fixed as a star: such glory is thy right.
Alas! it may not be: for earthly fame
10 Is Fortune's frail dependant; yet there lives
A Judge, who, as man claims by merit, gives;
To whose all-pondering mind a noble aim,
Faithfully kept, is as a noble deed;

In whose pure sight all virtue doth succeed.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

AMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772

SAMU

---1834) was born at Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire, where his father was vicar and head-master of the grammar school. From Christ's Hospital, London, where he startled his schoolfellow Lamb by his precocious interest in metaphysics, he passed to Jesus College, Cambridge, which he left without a degree in 1794. Unfitted for a regular profession by his indolent character and extreme views in religion and politics, he early looked to writing for support, especially after a scheme of emigrating to America with Southey and some other friends and founding a communistic colony or 'Pantisocracy' had come to nothing. His marriage to Sara Fricker (1795) brought him a few months of happy retirement at the small watering-place of Clevedon, near Bristol, which he commemorated in some fine lyrics (Eolian Harp and Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement). After the failure of several plans of occupation, a home was found for him in the little market-town of Nether Stowey, Somerset, where a congenial literary circle gathered round a rich tanner, Thomas Poole. The three years spent there (1796-1798) proved a happy time of poetic inspiration for him, especially after the Wordsworths had removed to the neighbouring Alfoxden (1797). The result of the stimulating friendship of the two poets was the me

morable Lyrical Ballads (1798), to which Coleridge contributed his wonderful ballad of the Ancient Mariner. Not included in this volume, but composed about that time were also the exquisite lines entitled Love, the first part of the weird ballad of Christabel (continuated by a second part in 1800, both published 1816), and the magnificent fragment of Kubla Khan, which was the record of an opium-dream. In 1798 the munificence of the brothers Wedgwood enabled him to go to Germany, where he studied at Göttingen and became well acquainted with German literature and philosophy. On his return he published his powerful translation of Schiller's Wallenstein (1800), and took up his abode at Greta Hall, near Keswick (1800-1810), whither his brother-in-law Southey followed him in 1803, whilst Wordsworth was already settled there at Grasmere. Much troubled by rheumatism and neuralgia Coleridge had more and more become a slave to opium - drinking, which severely injured both his body and mind. To restore his health he tried a sojourn at Malta (1804); but in vain. A growing estrangement from his wife aggravated his despondency, and led him at last to leave his family in the Lakes and to go to London. There he found a home with an old friend, Mr. Morgan, and managed to do much journalistic work, besides giving several courses of

lectures on Shakspere and other poets, which have come down to us only in fragmentary notes. Finally he placed himself under the care of the physician Dr. Gillman, in whose house at Highgate he spent the last 18 years of his life.

There he occupied himself mainly with metaphysical studies, and soon became the centre of admiring friends and disciples, who were never tired of listening to long expositions of his political and religious ideas, which had more and more veered round to a steady Toryism and devout Anglicanism.

Coleridge claims a place in the front ranks of English writers as a poet, critic, and philosopher. As a poet his work is very unequal; but his really great poetry, small though it be in bulk, is hardly equalled for imaginative vigour and artistic workmanship. His poetry of natural scenery is wonderfully interfused with a metaphysical and mystic vein. But above all he was the poet of the supernatural, the marvellous, which he knows how to bring home to us by presenting it at once with realistic consistency and rich suggestive dreaminess, and by depicting its weird effects with a delicate and subtle psychology. His greatest poem, the fragment

on Christabel and the serpent-witch Geraldine, is also remarkable for its irregular, but harmoniously modulated metre (four beats with an iambic-anapæstic rhythm), which was imitated both by Byron and Scott. In his criticism on art he adopted the æsthetic teaching of Paul Richter, Schlegel, and Schelling, and, under the influence of Lessing, first taught his countrymen to admire Shakspere not as a wild irregular genius, but as a consummate artist. Also as a thinker he introduced German philosophy, and tried to combine the transcendentalism of Kant with the theosophic mysticism of Schelling. The most important of his prose works is the Biographia Literaria (1817), in which he traced the development of his literary and philosophic opinions; his most popular one is the Aids to Reflection (1825), an edifying religious manuel, which holds an important place in ecclesiastical history as one of the first utterances of that anti-rationalistic feeling which found full expression in the socalled 'Oxford Movement'. Twice he started a periodical, the radical Watchman (1796) and the æsthetic Friend (1809), of which only the second had a temporary success.

THE EOLIAN HARP.

COMPOSED AT CLEVEDON, SOMERSETSHIRE.
[August 20, 1795]

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,

5 (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.

10 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,

16 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

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Over delicious surges sink and rise,
20 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,

25 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 30 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 Is Music slumbering on her instrument.

And thus, my love! as on the midway slope 35 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, 40 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
45 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
50 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
55 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
60 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!

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