[2] And] Yet Letter, 1829.
[4] keep school] keep school Keepsake.
[9-11]
Methinks I see them now, the triune group,
With straiten'd arms uprais'd, the Palms aslope
Robe touching Robe beneath, and blending as they flow.
Letter, July 1829.
[15] doth] will Keepsake, 1833.
[24-6]
Then like a Statue with a Statue's strength,
And with a Smile, the Sister Fay of those
Who at meek Evening's Close
To teach our Grief repose,
Their freshly-gathered store of Moonbeams wreath
On Marble Lips, a Chantrey has made breathe.
Letter, July 1829.
Verse, pictures, music, thoughts both grave and gay,
Remembrances of dear-loved friends away,
On spotless page of virgin white displayed,
Such should thine Album be, for such art thou, sweet maid!
1829.
FOOTNOTES:
WRITTEN IN COMMONPLACE BOOK OF MISS BARBOUR, DAUGHTER
OF THE MINISTER OF THE U.S.A. TO ENGLAND
Child of my muse! in Barbour's gentle hand
Go cross the main: thou seek'st no foreign land:
'Tis not the clod beneath our feet we name
Our country. Each heaven-sanctioned tie the same,
Laws, manners, language, faith, ancestral blood, 5
Domestic honour, awe of womanhood:—
With kindling pride thou wilt rejoice to see
Britain with elbow-room and doubly free!
Go seek thy countrymen! and if one scar
Still linger of that fratricidal war, 10
Look to the maid who brings thee from afar;
Be thou the olive-leaf and she the dove,
And say, I greet thee with a brother's love!
S. T. Coleridge.
Grove, Highgate, August 1829.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] lines written . . . daughter of the late Minister to England.
Athenaeum 1884.
SONG, ex improviso[483:2]
ON HEARING A SONG IN PRAISE OF A LADY'S BEAUTY
'Tis not the lily-brow I prize,
Nor roseate cheeks, nor sunny eyes,
Enough of lilies and of roses!
A thousand-fold more dear to me
The gentle look that Love discloses,— 5
The look that Love alone can see!
Keepsake, 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] To a Lady Essays, &c. 1850.
[5-6]
The look that gentle Love discloses,—
That look which Love alone can see.
Essays, &c. 1850.
LOVE AND FRIENDSHIP OPPOSITE[484:1]
Her attachment may differ from yours in degree,
Provided they are both of one kind;
But Friendship, how tender so ever it be,
Gives no accord to Love, however refined.
Love, that meets not with Love, its true nature revealing, 5
Grows ashamed of itself, and demurs:
If you cannot lift hers up to your state of feeling,
You must lower down your state to hers.
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] In Answer To A Friend's Question F. O.
[1] in degree] in degree F. O.
That Jealousy may rule a mind
Where Love could never be
I know; but ne'er expect to find
Love without Jealousy.
She has a strange cast in her ee, 5
A swart sour-visaged maid—
But yet Love's own twin-sister she
His house-mate and his shade.
Ask for her and she'll be denied:—
What then? they only mean 10
Their mistress has lain down to sleep,
And can't just then be seen.
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
PHANTOM OR FACT[484:3]
A DIALOGUE IN VERSE
AUTHOR
A lovely form there sate beside my bed,
And such a feeding calm its presence shed,
[485]A tender love so pure from earthly leaven,
That I unnethe the fancy might control,
'Twas my own spirit newly come from heaven, 5
Wooing its gentle way into my soul!
But ah! the change—It had not stirr'd, and yet—
Alas! that change how fain would I forget!
That shrinking back, like one that had mistook!
That weary, wandering, disavowing look! 10
'Twas all another, feature, look, and frame,
And still, methought, I knew, it was the same!
FRIEND
This riddling tale, to what does it belong?
Is't history? vision? or an idle song?
Or rather say at once, within what space 15
Of time this wild disastrous change took place?
AUTHOR
Call it a moment's work (and such it seems)
This tale's a fragment from the life of dreams;
But say, that years matur'd the silent strife,
And 'tis a record from the dream of life. 20
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
Where true Love burns Desire is Love's pure flame;
It is the reflex of our earthly frame,
That takes its meaning from the nobler part,
And but translates the language of the heart.
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
[1-4]
Desire of pure Love born, itself the same;
A pulse that animates the outer frame,
And takes the impress of the nobler part,
It but repeats the Life, that of the Heart.
MS. S. T. C.
CHARITY IN THOUGHT[486:1]
To praise men as good, and to take them for such,
Is a grace which no soul can mete out to a tittle;—
Of which he who has not a little too much,
Will by Charity's gauge surely have much too little.
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
HUMILITY THE MOTHER OF CHARITY[486:2]
Frail creatures are we all! To be the best,
Is but the fewest faults to have:—
Look thou then to thyself, and leave the rest
To God, thy conscience, and the grave.
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
[COELI ENARRANT][486:3]
The stars that wont to start, as on a chace,
Mid twinkling insult on Heaven's darken'd face,
Like a conven'd conspiracy of spies
Wink at each other with confiding eyes!
Turn from the portent—all is blank on high, 5
No constellations alphabet the sky:
The Heavens one large Black Letter only shew,
And as a child beneath its master's blow
Shrills out at once its task and its affright—[486:4]
The groaning world now learns to read aright, 10
And with its Voice of Voices cries out, O!
? 1830.
FOOTNOTES:
['Finally, what is Reason? You have often asked me: and this
is my answer':—]
Whene'er the mist, that stands 'twixt God and thee,
Defecates to a pure transparency,
That intercepts no light and adds no stain—
There Reason is, and then begins her reign!
But alas! 5
——'tu stesso, ti fai grosso
Col falso immaginar, sì che non vedi
Ciò che vedresti, se l'avessi scosso.'
Dante, Paradiso, Canto i.
1830.
FOOTNOTES:
—E coelo descendit γνῶθι σεαυτόν.—Juvenal, xi. 27.
Γνῶθι σεαυτόν!—and is this the prime
And heaven-sprung adage of the olden time!—
Say, canst thou make thyself?—Learn first that trade;—
Haply thou mayst know what thyself had made.
What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine own?— 5
What is there in thee, Man, that can be known?—
Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought,
A phantom dim of past and future wrought,
Vain sister of the worm,—life, death, soul, clod—
Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God! 10
1832.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] The heading 'Self-knowledge' appears first in 1893.
Beareth all things.—1 Cor. xiii. 7.
Gently I took that which ungently came,[488:2]
And without scorn forgave:—Do thou the same.
A wrong done to thee think a cat's-eye spark
Thou wouldst not see, were not thine own heart dark.
Thine own keen sense of wrong that thirsts for sin, 5
Fear that—the spark self-kindled from within,
Which blown upon will blind thee with its glare,
Or smother'd stifle thee with noisome air.
Clap on the extinguisher, pull up the blinds,
And soon the ventilated spirit finds 10
Its natural daylight. If a foe have kenn'd,
Or worse than foe, an alienated friend,
A rib of dry rot in thy ship's stout side,
Think it God's message, and in humble pride
With heart of oak replace it;—thine the gains— 15
Give him the rotten timber for his pains!
? 1832.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] The heading 'Forbearance' appears first in 1893.
LOVE'S APPARITION AND EVANISHMENT[488:3]
AN ALLEGORIC ROMANCE
Like a lone Arab, old and blind,
Some caravan had left behind,
[489]Who sits beside a ruin'd well,
Where the shy sand-asps bask and swell;
And now he hangs his agéd head aslant, 5
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, 10
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, 15
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, 20
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;— 25
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 30
That, nursed in tenderest care, yet fades away
In the chill'd heart by gradual self-decay.
1833.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
[4] Where basking Dipsads[489:A] hiss and swell F. O. 1834.
[489:A] The Asps of the sand-desert, anciently named Dipsads.
[7] And now] Anon F. O. 1834.
[14] Flitting across the idle sense the while F. O. 1834.
[27] That woke enough F. O. 1834.
[29-32]
Idly we supplicate the Powers above:
There is no resurrection for a Love
That uneclips'd, unshadow'd, wanes away
In the chill'd heart by inward self-decay.
Poor mimic of the Past! the love is o'er
That must resolve to do what did itself of yore.
Letter, April 27, 1824.
TO THE YOUNG ARTIST[490:1]
KAYSER OF KASERWERTH
Kayser! to whom, as to a second self,
Nature, or Nature's next-of-kin, the Elf,
Hight Genius, hath dispensed the happy skill
To cheer or soothe the parting friend's 'Alas!'
Turning the blank scroll to a magic glass, 5
That makes the absent present at our will;
And to the shadowing of thy pencil gives
Such seeming substance, that it almost lives.
Well hast thou given the thoughtful Poet's face!
Yet hast thou on the tablet of his mind 10
A more delightful portrait left behind—
Even thy own youthful beauty, and artless grace,
Thy natural gladness and eyes bright with glee!
Kayser! farewell!
Be wise! be happy! and forget not me.
1833.
FOOTNOTES:
MY BAPTISMAL BIRTH-DAY[490:2]
God's child in Christ adopted,—Christ my all,—
What that earth boasts were not lost cheaply, rather
Than forfeit that blest name, by which I call
The Holy One, the Almighty God, my Father?—
Father! in Christ we live, and Christ in Thee— 5
Eternal Thou, and everlasting we.
The heir of heaven, henceforth I fear not death:
In Christ I live! in Christ I draw the breath
[491]Of the true life!—Let then earth, sea, and sky
Make war against me! On my heart I show 10
Their mighty master's seal. In vain they try
To end my life, that can but end its woe.—
Is that a death-bed where a Christian lies?—
Yes! but not his—'tis Death itself there dies.
1833.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title] Lines composed on a sick-bed, under severe bodily suffering, on
my spiritual birthday, October 28th. F. O.
[1] Born unto God in Christ—in Christ, my All! F. O.
[9-10]
Let Sea, and Earth and Sky
Wage war against me! On my front I show
F. O.
[14] his . . . there] his . . . there F. O.
Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God,
And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod
[492]A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.
O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;
That he who many a year with toil of breath 5
Found death in life, may here find life in death!
Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame[492:1]
He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!
9th November, 1833.
FOOTNOTES:
LINENOTES:
Title or Heading] (a) 'Epitaph on a Poet little known, yet
better known by the Initials of his name than by the Name Itself.' S. T.
C. Letter to Mrs. Aders: (b) 'Epitaph on a Writer better known by
the Initials of his Name than by the name itself. Suppose an upright
tombstone.' S. T. C. Letter to J. G. Lockhart: (c) 'On an author not
wholly unknown; but better known by the initials of his name than by the
name itself, which he partly Graecized, Hic jacet qui stetit, restat,
resurget—on a Tombstone.' Letter to J. H. Green: (d) 'Epitaph in
Hornsey Churchyard. Hic jacet S. T. C. Grew (1): (e) 'Etesi's
(sic) Epitaph,' (and below (e)) 'Inscription on the Tombstone of one
not unknown; yet more commonly known by the Initials of his Name than by
the Name itself.' Grew (2): (f) 'Esteese's αυτοεπιταφιον.' Note
in Poole's Todtentanz.
From the letter to Mrs. Aders it appears that Coleridge did not
contemplate the epitaph being inscribed on his tombstone, but that he
intended it to be printed 'in letters of a distinctly visible and
legible size' on the outline of a tomb-stone to be engraved as a
vignette to be published in a magazine, or to illustrate the last page
of his 'Miscellaneous Poems' in the second volume of his Poetical
Works. It would seem that the artist, Miss Denman, had included in her
sketch of the vignette the figure of a Muse, and to this Coleridge
objects:—'A rude old yew-tree, or a mountain ash, with a grave or two,
or any other characteristic of a village church-yard,—such a hint of a
landscape was all I meant; but if any figure rather that of an elderly
man, thoughtful with quiet tears upon his cheek.' Letters of S. T. C.,
1895, ii. 770.
For the versions inscribed in Grew's Cosmologia Sacra, and in Poole's
copy of the Todtentanz, vide Appendices of this work.