Like waters shot from some high crag, A river steep and wide. And in delightful contrast, when the curse is over, and the ship nearing land— Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seem'd to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning! Last, in this region of "dreamy grace and unrivalled fancy, Coleridge, whether in dream or waking, tells how Kubla Khan decreed his "stately pleasure-dome" Where Alph, the sacred river, ran 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, Beautiful, however, as are these vignettes, his pictorial power, his "shaping spirit," his penetrative and subtle detail--though inevitably the special glamour of Christabel and the Mariner be absent-are not less displayed in the English landscape, to which, as a rule, Coleridge's confines himself. Thus, in the Fears in Solitude, we find the scenery of Nether-StoweyA green and silent spot, amid the hills, A small and silent dell! O'er stiller place As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax, When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve And we may add the impassioned address O native Britain! O my Mother Isle ! Coleridge and Wordsworth, lucida sidera, are so closely intertwined in fame, as they were in life, that I cannot here refrain from quoting Wordsworth's companion apostrophe— Ah! not for emerald fields alone, With ambient streams more pure and bright Than fabled Cytherea's zone, Glittering before the Thunderer's sight, Is to my heart of hearts endear'd The ground where we were born and rear'd! Returning to Coleridge, passage on passage of similar beauty brighten the Frost at Midnight, the Ode on Dejection, the Eolian Harp, the Nightingale, and the detailed landscape of the Quantock Hills in the lines addressed To a Young Friend. From the powerful, but much overstrained Ode to France we take the very imaginative prelude— Ye Clouds that far above me float and pause, Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds' singing, My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I wound, Inspired, beyond the guess of folly, By each rude shape and wild unconquerable sound ! A largeness of style, a sweep of thought is here, which, with more art, preludes to the landscape of Childe Harold. Like that, the note has been seldom heard since. It was inspired by a time of national struggle, alarm, and courage. Our next example follows that beautiful picture in which Coleridge anticipates the happy education of Nature provided for his son, poor gifted Hartley, closing with a winter scene as he sits by the child's cradle -All seasons shall be sweet to thee, Whether the summer clothe the general earth Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet Moon. Now, again (1802), it is a night scene which he paints, when under the spell of that deep dejection which like a pall overhung this great genius for year on year All this long eve, so balmy and serene, Yon crescent Moon, as fix'd 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! In its detail, refined, yet broad, truth to nature, and per sonal feeling, how rarely has this sketch been equalled by any previous landscape in poetry! Two more small vignettes, all made up of music and beauty, may be added to this little anthology, and, I hope, lead others to search for other like flowers in the poet's garden. The first is an oriental scene of fancy— Encinctured with a twine of leaves, The moon was bright, the air was free, Like a picture rich and rare. The magical note of Kubla Khan seems here audible, as our next little song, though probably written in 1824,1 and founded upon a sentence in Sidney's Arcadia, yet seems to breathe the melody and repose of the poet's early days of too brief happiness. It has the charm of a fragment by Sappho O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind! As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping; Meets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping. A few more mere snatches from Coleridge's work shall be our lingering farewell to this true singer. The Advent of Love is thus delicately drawn As sighing o'er the blossom's bloom Meek Evening wakes its soft perfume Now, from Spring in a Village, two beautiful lines paint children running out to play; how they 1 Sic J. D. Campbell. Released from school, their little hearts at rest, Or take this glance at the world's earliest sunset——— -Nature mourn'd when sunk the first Day's light, When the rustic's eye, From the drear desolate whiteness of his fields, And clouds slow varying their huge imagery. But enough of these disiecti membra poetae. Let me sum up in a word. Even Shakespeare's grasp of Nature, though To wider, is not, I think, more intimate than Coleridge's. take a figure from physical science, the union of Nature with the soul in him is chemical, not mechanical combination. We have now a small group of poets whose style belongs essentially to the early part of the nineteenth century. None of their landscapes, perhaps, are painted as offering any moral appealing to the human soul; none of them approach the rendering of the inner animating principle of Nature as the expression of the Creator's will and pleasure. Yet these landscapes also belong truly to the modern school; such finished definite pictures, wrought for their own sake, will be looked for almost in vain among all the centuries preceding. Earliest of these, and indeed partly belonging to the previous century, George Crabbe (1754-1832) represents the unconventional treatment of life, the contempt or distaste for court and town, the closer sympathy with the poor, which began to be felt in literature when the reign of Dryden and Pope was But he also shared the impulse to write out the landscape in verse, which had begun with Thomson. From this, however, Crabbe discarded the decorative treatment of the Seasons, and the direct moralisation of Cowper. Nature with over. |