The eyeless chemist heard the process rise,
The steamy chalice bubbled up in sighs;
Sweet sounds transpired, as when the en-
amour'd dove

Pours the soft murmuring of responsive love.
The finish'd work might Envy vainly blame,
And "Kisses" was the precious compound's

name;

With half the God his Cyprian Mother blest, And breathed on Sara's1 lovelier lips the rest.

THE ROSE.

S late each flower that sweetest blows
I pluck'd, the garden's pride!
Within the petals of a rose
A sleeping Love I spied:

Around his brows a beamy wreath
Of many a lucent hue;

All purple glow'd his cheek, beneath,
Inebriate with dew.

I softly seized the unguarded Power,
Nor scared his balmy rest:

The

1 Sara's.] One of Coleridge's mystifications. original name in this poem, as also in the next, was Nesbitt. It is possible that he made a second presentation of the two poems, in the year following.

And placed him, caged within the flower,
On spotless Sara's breast.

1

But when, unweeting of the guile,
Awoke the prisoner sweet,

He struggled to escape awhile,

And stamp'd his faery feet.

Ah! soon the soul-entrancing sight
Subdued the impatient boy!

He gazed! he thrill'd with deep delight!
Then clapp'd his wings for joy.

"And O!" he cried-" of magic kind
What charms this throne endear!

Some other Love let Venus find

I'll fix my empire here."

LINES ON AN AUTUMNAL EVENING.*

THOU wild Fancy, check thy wing!

No more

Those thin white flakes, those purple clouds, explore!

1 Sara's.] See note to The Composition of a Kiss. The original title was,-" On presenting a Moss Rose to Miss F. Nesbitt." The date is 1793.

*Stated in the first editions to have been "written in early youth." It could not have been written in very early youth, if "the Muses' calm abode," alludes to Cambridge.

The poem is redolent of Goldsmith and Gray.

Nor there with happy spirits speed thy flight, Bathed in rich amber-glowing floods of light; Nor in yon gleam, where slow descends the

day,

With western peasants hail the morning ray!
Ah! rather bid the perish'd pleasures move,
A shadowy train, across the soul of Love!
O'er disappointment's wintry desert fling
Each flower that wreathed the dewy locks of
Spring,

When blushing, like a bride, from hope's trim bower

She leapt, awaken'd by the pattering shower.

Now sheds the sinking sun a deeper gleam;
Aid, lovely Sorceress! aid thy poet's dream!
With faery wand O bid the maid arise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes;
As erst when from the Muses' calm abode
I came, with learning's meed1 not unbestow'd;
When as she twined a laurel round my brow,
And met my kiss and half return'd my vow,
O'er all my frame shot rapid my thrill'd heart,
And every nerve confess'd the electric dart.

O dear deceit! I see the maiden rise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes!
When first the lark high-soaring swells his
throat,

Mocks the tired eye, and scatters the loud note,
I trace her footsteps on the accustom'd lawn,
I mark her glancing mid the gleam of dawn.

1 With learning's meed, &c.] Coleridge gained a gold medal at Cambridge for a Greek ode, in 1791.

When the bent flower beneath the night-dew

weeps,

And on the lake the silver lustre sleeps,
Amid the paly radiance soft and sad,

She meets my lonely path in moonbeams clad.
With her along the streamlet's brink I rove;
With her I list the warblings of the grove;
And seems in each low wind her voice to float,
Lone-whispering pity in each soothing note!

Spirits of Love! ye heard her name! Obey
The powerful spell, and to my haunt repair.
Whether on clustering pinions ye are there,
Where rich snows blossom on the myrtle-trees,
Or with fond languishment around my fair
Sigh in the loose luxuriance of her hair;
O heed the spell, and hither wing your way,
Like far-off music, voyaging the breeze!

Spirits! to you the infant maid was given,
Form'd by the wondrous alchemy of Heaven;
No fairer maid does Love's wide empire know,
No fairer maid e'er heaved the bosom's snow.
A thousand Loves around her forehead fly;
A thousand Loves sit melting' in her eye;
Love lights her smile-in joy's bright nectar
dips

His myrtle flower,2 and plants it on her lips.

Melting.] The last line but one of the fifth stanza of Songs of the Pixies (and two lines earlier you note "the young-eyed Loves,") originally stood

"The electric flash, that from the melting eye."

2 His myrtle flower.] An improvement on "The flamy rose"-the earlier reading.

She speaks and hark that passion-warbled

song

Still, Fancy! still, that voice, those notes pro

long,

As sweet as when that voice with rapturous falls Shall wake the soften'd echoes of Heaven's

halls!

O (have I sigh'd) were mine the wizard's rod,'
Or mine the power of Proteus, changeful god!
A flower-entangled arbour I would seem,
To shield my love from noontide's sultry beam :
Or bloom a myrtle, from whose odorous boughs
My love might weave gay garlands for her
brows.

When twilight stole across the fading vale,
To fan my love I'd be the evening gale;
Mourn in the soft folds of her swelling vest,
And flutter my faint pinions on her breast!
On Seraph wing I'd float a dream by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight:-
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies,
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes!

As when the savage, who his drowsy frame
Had bask'd beneath the sun's unclouded flame,
Awakes amid the troubles of the air,

The skiey deluge, and white lightning's glare

1 O (have I sigh'd) were, &c.] "I entreat the public's pardon for having carelessly suffered to be printed such intolerable stuff as this and the thirteen following lines. They have not the merit even of originality; as every thought is to be found in the Greek Epigrams."- Note of COLERIDGE in the edition of 1796.