'My friends with rude ungentle words They scoff and bid me fly to thee! O give me shelter in thy breast! O shield and shelter me! 'My Henry, I have given thee much, The Knight made answer to the Maid, None statelier in the land. The fairest one shall be my love's, 30 'Wait only till the hand of eve Hath wholly closed yon western bars, And through the dark we two will steal Beneath the twinkling stars!'— 40 The dark? the dark? No! not the dark? The twinkling stars? How, Henry? O God! 'twas in the eye of noon [Sent in a letter from Ratzeburg to the Wordsworths at Goslar in the winter of 1798-9. The seven lines beginning 'O! what a life is the eye' were printed in the edition of 1834, with the heading 'Written during a temporary blindness in the year 1799.' 'When I was ill and wakeful (writes Coleridge) I composed some English hexameters:-1 WILLIAM, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear Dorothea! Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table; Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,1 Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic, Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkéd left hand, Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger; Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo; And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you. This is a galloping measure; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop! All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the stag-hounds, Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still onwards,2 1 False metre. 2 Still flying onwards' were perhaps better. 138 AD VILMUM AXIOLOGUM HYMN TO THE EARTH I would full fain pull in my hard-mouthed Lives with a separate life, and 'Is it the Spirit?' he murmurs: runaway hunter; But our English Spondeans are clumsy Sure it has thoughts of its own, and to yet impotent curb-reins; see is only its language." And so to make him go slowly, no way left have I but to lame him. Many a mile, O! many a wearisome mile are ye distant, Long, long comfortless roads, with no one eye that doth know us. O! it is all too far to send you mockeries idle : Yea, and I feel it not right! But O! my friends, my beloved! Feverish and wakeful I lie,-I am weary of feeling and thinking. Every thought is worn down, I am weary yet cannot be vacant. Five long hours have I tossed, rheumatic heats, dry and flushing, Gnawing behind in my head, and wan dering and throbbing about me, Busy and tiresome, my friends, as the heat of the boding night-spider.1 'I forget the beginning of the line: my eyes are a burthen, 2 Now unwillingly closed, now open and This is the word of the Lord! it is aching with darkness. O! what a life is the eye! what a fine 2 and inscrutable essence! Him that is utterly blind, nor glimpses the fire that warms him ; Him that never beheld the swelling breast of his mother; Him that ne'er smiled at the bosom as babe that smiles in its slumber; 3 Even to him it exists, it stirs and moves 5 in its prison; spoken and Beings Eternal Live and are borne as an Infant, the Eternal begets the Immortal, Love is the Spirit of Life, and Music the Life of the Spirit! MS. ? 1805. HYMN TO THE EARTH [IMITATED FROM STOLBERG'S HYMNE AN DIE ERDE] HEXAMETERS EARTH! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, 1 [A spirit. 1834. Ed.] 2 [A language. 1834. Ed.] Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn thee! Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on your surges Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions. Travelling the vale with mine eyesgreen meadows and lake with green island, Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in brightness, Thrill'd with thy beauty and love in the wooded slope of the mountain, Here, great mother, I lie, thy child, with his head on thy bosom ! Playful the spirits of noon, that rushing soft through thy tresses, Green-hair'd goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or linger, Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs. Into my being thou murmurest joy, and tenderest sadness Shedd'st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the heavenly sadness Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymn of thanksgiving. Earth thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother, Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer! Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget not, Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold thee! Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation ?) Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamour'd! Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess, Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of morning! Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention : Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre ! Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith Myriad myriads of lives teem'd forth from the mighty embracement. Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impell'd by thousand-fold instincts, Fill'd, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their channels; Laugh'd on their shores the hoarse seas; the yearning ocean swell'd upward; Young life low'd through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing mountains, Wander'd bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches. MAHOMET * ? 1799. UTTER the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed, Prophet and priest, who scatter'd abroad both evil and blessing, Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow'd slow persecution, Soul-withering, but crush'd the blasphemous rites of the Pagan And idolatrous Christians. For veiling the Gospel of Jesus, They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest. Wherefore Heaven decreed th' enthusiast warrior of Mecca, Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness. Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol ; Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid the people with mad shouts Was it not well with thee then, when first Thundering now, and now with saddest thy lap was ungirdled, Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he woo'd thee and won thee! ululation Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river From the far shores of the bleat-resounding island Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating, Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland, Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes METRICAL FEET LESSON FOR A BOY TROCHEE trips from lōng to shōrt; Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllǎblě. Ïambics march from shōrt to lōng ;— With ǎ leap and ǎ bound the swift Anăpasts thrōng; One syllable long, with one short at each side, Up to the groves of the high embosom'd Amphibrachys hastes with ǎ stately temple. There in a thicket of dedicated roses, Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision, Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea, Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat, stride ; My dear, dear child! you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge See a man who so loves you as your fond S. T. COLERIDGE. 1803. |