Poems of Coleridge

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY PRISON

ADDRESSED TO CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE, LONDON

In the June of 1797 some long-expected friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the garden-bower.

  Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,  This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost  Beauties and feelings, such as would have been  Most sweet to my remembrance even when age  Had dimmed mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,  Friends, whom I never more may meet again,  On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,  Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,  To that still roaring dell, of which I told;  The roaring dell, o'erwooded, narrow, deep,  And only speckled by the mid-day sun;  Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock  Flings arching like a bridge—that branchless ash,  Unsunned and damp, whose few poor yellow-leaves  Ne'er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,  Fanned by the water-fall! and there my friends  Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,  That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)  Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge  Of the blue clay-stone.  Now, my friends emerge  Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again  The many-steepled tract magnificent  Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,  With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up  The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles  Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on  In gladness all; but thou, me thinks, most glad,  My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined  And hungered after Nature, many a year,  In the great City pent, winning thy way  With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain  And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink  Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!  Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,  Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds  Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!  And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend  Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,  Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round  On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem  Less gross than bodily; and of such hues  As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes  Spirits perceive his presence.  A delight  Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad  As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,  This little lime-tree bower, have I not marked  Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze  Hung the transparent foliage; and I watched  Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to see  The shadow of the leaf and stem above,  Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree  Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay  Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps  Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass—  Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue  Through the late twilight: and though now the bat  Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,  Yet still the solitary humble-bee  Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know  That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;  No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,  No waste so vacant, but. may well employ  Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart.  Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes  'Tis well to be bereft of promised good,  That we may lift the soul, and contemplate  With lively joy the joys we cannot share.  My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook  Beat its straight path along the dusky air  Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing  (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)  Had cross'd the mighty orb's dilated glory,  While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,  Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm  For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom  No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

1797.

TO A GENTLEMAN

[WILLIAM WORDSWORTH]COMPOSED ON THE NIGHT AFTER HIS RECITATION OF A POEM ON THE GROWTH OF AN INDIVIDUAL MIND  Friend of the wise! and Teacher of the Good!  Into my heart have I received that Lay  More than historic, that prophetic Lay  Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)  Of the foundations and the building up  Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell  What may be told, to the understanding mind  Revealable; and what within the mind  By vital breathings secret as the soul  Of vernal growth, oft quickens in the heart  Thoughts all too deep for words!—                            Theme hard as high!  Of smiles spontaneous, and mysterious fears  (The first-born they of Reason and twin-birth),  Of tides obedient to external force,  And currents self-determined, as might seem,  Or by some inner Power; of moments awful,  Now in thy inner life, and now abroad,  When power streamed from thee, and thy soul received  The light reflected, as a light bestowed—  Of fancies fair, and milder hours of youth,  Hyblean murmurs of poetic thought  Industrious in its joy, in vales and glens  Native or outland, lakes and famous hills!  Or on the lonely high-road, when the stars  Were rising; or by secret mountain-streams,  The guides and the companions of thy way!  Of more than Fancy, of the Social Sense  Distending wide, and man beloved as man,  Where France in all her towns lay vibrating  Like some becalmed bark beneath the burst  Of Heaven's immediate thunder, when no cloud  Is visible, or shadow on the main.  For thou wert there, thine own brows garlanded,  Amid the tremor of a realm aglow,  Amid a mighty nation jubilant,  When from the general heart of human kind  Hope sprang forth like a full-born Deity!  —Of that dear Hope afflicted and struck down,  So summoned homeward, thenceforth calm and sure  From the dread watch-tower of man's absolute self,  With light unwaning on her eyes, to look  Far on-herself a glory to behold,  The Angel of the vision! Then (last strain)  Of Duty, chosen Laws controlling choice,  Action and joy!—An orphic song indeed,  A song divine of high and passionate thoughts  To their own music chaunted!                                  O great Bard!  Ere yet that last strain dying awed the air,  With steadfast eye I viewed thee in the choir  Of ever-enduring men. The truly great  Have all one age, and from one visible space  Shed influence! They, both in power and act,  Are permanent, and Time is not with them,  Save as it worketh for them, they in it.  Nor less a sacred Roll, than those of old,  And to be placed, as they, with gradual fame  Among the archives of mankind, thy work  Makes audible a linked lay of Truth,  Of Truth profound a sweet continuous lay,  Not learnt, but native, her own natural notes  Ah! as I listen'd with a heart forlorn,  The pulses of my being beat anew:  And even as life retains upon the drowned,  Life's joy rekindling roused a throng of pains—  Keen pangs of Love, awakening as a babe  Turbulent, with an outcry in the heart;  And fears self-willed, that shunned the eye of hope;  And hope that scarce would know itself from fear;  Sense of past youth, and manhood come in vain,  And genius given, and knowledge won in vain;  And all which I had culled in wood-walks wild,  And all which patient toil had reared, and all,  Commune with thee had opened out—but flowers  Strewed on my corse, and borne upon my bier,  In the same coffin, for the self-same grave!    That way no more! and ill beseems it me,  Who came a welcomer in herald's guise,  Singing of glory, and futurity,  To wander back on such unhealthful road,  Plucking the poisons of self-harm! And ill  Such intertwine beseems triumphal wreaths  Strew'd before thy advancing!  Nor do thou,  Sage Bard! impair the memory of that hour  Of thy communion with my nobler mind  By pity or grief, already felt too long!  Nor let my words import more blame than needs.  The tumult rose and ceased: for Peace is nigh  Where wisdom's voice has found a listening heart.  Amid the howl of more than wintry storms,  The halcyon hears the voice of vernal hours  Already on the wing.  Eve following eve,  Dear tranquil time, when the sweet sense of Home  Is sweetest! moments for their own sake hailed  And more desired, more precious, for thy song,  In silence listening like a devout child,  My soul lay passive, by thy various strain  Driven as in surges now beneath the stars,  With momentary stars of my own birth,  Fair constellated foam, still darting off  Into the darkness; now a tranquil sea,  Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the moon.  And when—O Friend! my comforter and guide!  Strong in thyself, and powerful to give strength!—  Thy long sustained Song finally closed,  And thy deep voice had ceased—yet thou thyself  Wert still before my eyes, and round us both  That happy vision of beloved faces—  Scarce conscious, and yet conscious of its close  I sate, my being blended in one thought  (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?)  Absorbed, yet hanging still upon the sound—  And when I rose, I found myself in prayer.

January 1807.

HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI

Besides the Rivers, Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and within a few paces of the Glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense numbers, with its "flowers of loveliest blue."

  Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star  In his steep course? So long he seems to pause  On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC!  The Arve and Arveiron at thy base  Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!  Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,  How silently! Around thee and above  Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,  An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,  As with a wedge! But when I look again,  It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,  Thy habitation from eternity!  O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,  Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,  Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer  I worshipped the Invisible alone.    Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,  So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,  Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,  Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy:  Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,  Into the mighty vision passing—there  As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!    Awake, my soul! not only passive praise  Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,  Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,  Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!  Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.    Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!  O struggling with the darkness all the night,  And visited all night by troops of stars,  Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:  Companion of the morning-star at dawn,  Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn  Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise!  Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?  Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?  Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?    And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!  Who called you forth from night and utter death,  From dark and icy caverns called you forth,  Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,  For ever shattered and the same for ever?  Who gave you your invulnerable life,  Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy.  Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?  And who commanded (and the silence came),  Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?    Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow  Adown enormous ravines slope amain—  Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,  And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!  Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!  Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven  Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun  Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers  Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—  GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,  Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!  GOD! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!  Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!  And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,  And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!    Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!  Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!  Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!  Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!  Ye signs and wonders of the element!  Utter forth GOD, and fill the hills with praise!    Thou too; hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,  Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard,  Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene  Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast—  Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou  That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low  In adoration, upward from thy base  Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,  Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,  To rise before me—Rise, O ever rise,  Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!  Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,  Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,  Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,  And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,  Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD.

1802

FROST AT MIDNIGHT

  The Frost performs its secret ministry,  Unhelped by any wind. The owlet's cry  Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.  The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,  Have left me to that solitude, which suits  Abstruser musings: save that at my side  My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.  'Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs  And vexes meditation with its strange  And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,  This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,  With all the numberless goings-on of life,  Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame  Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;  Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,  Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.  Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature  Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,  Making it a companionable form,  Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit  By its own moods interprets, every where  Echo or mirror seeking of itself,  And makes a toy of Thought.                              But O! how oft,  How oft, at school, with most believing mind,  Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,  To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft  With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt  Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,  Whose bells, the poor man's only music, rang  From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,  So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me  With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear  Most like articulate sounds of things to come!  So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,  Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!  And so I brooded all the following morn,  Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye  Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:  Save if the door half opened, and I snatched  A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,  For still I hoped to see the stranger's face,  Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,  My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!    Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,  Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,  Fill up the interspersed vacancies  And momentary pauses of the thought!  My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart  With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,  And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,  And in far other scenes! For I was reared  In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,  And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.  But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze  By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags  Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,  Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores  And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear  The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible  Of that eternal language, which thy God  Utters, who from eternity doth teach  Himself in all, and all things in himself.  Great universal Teacher! he shall mould  Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.  Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,  Whether the summer clothe the general earth  With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing  Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch  Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch  Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall  Heard only in the trances of the blast,  Or if the secret ministry of frost  Shall hang them up in silent icicles,  Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

February 1798.

THE NIGHTINGALE

A CONVERSATION POEM, WRITTEN IN APRIL 1798  No cloud, no relique of the sunken day  Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip  Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.  Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!  You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,  Bur* hear no murmuring: it flows silently,  O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,  A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,  Yet let us think upon the vernal showers  That gladden the green earth, and we shall find  A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.  And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,  "Most musical, most melancholy" bird!  A melancholy bird? Oh! idle thought!  In Nature there is nothing melancholy.  But some night-wandering man whose heart was pierced  With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,  Or slow distemper, or neglected love,  (And so, poor wretch! fill'd all things with himself,  And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale  Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,  First named these notes a melancholy strain.  And many a poet echoes the conceit;  Poet who hath been building up the rhyme  When he had better far have stretched his limbs  Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,  By sun or moon-light, to the influxes  Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements  Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song  And of his fame forgetful! so his fame  Should share in Nature's immortality,  A venerable thing! and so his song  Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself  Be loved like Nature! But 'twill not be so;  And youths and maidens most poetical,  Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring  In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still  Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs  O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.  My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt  A different lore: we may not thus profane  Nature's sweet voices, always full of love  And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale  That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates  With fast thick warble his delicious notes,  As he were fearful that an April night  Would be too short for him to utter forth  His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul  Of all its music!  And I know a grove  Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,  Which the great lord inhabits not; and so  This grove is wild with tangling underwood,  And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,  Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.  But never elsewhere in one place I knew  So many nightingales; and far and near,  In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,  They answer and provoke each other's songs,  With skirmish and capricious passagings,  And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,  And one low piping sound more sweet than all—  Stirring the air with such an harmony,  That should you close your eyes, you might almost  Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,  Whose dewy leaflets are but half-disclosed,  You may perchance behold them on the twigs,  Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,  Glistening, while many a glow-worm in the shade  Lights up her love-torch.                            A most gentle Maid,  Who dwelleth in her hospitable home  Hard by the castle, and at latest eve  (Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate  To something more than Nature in the grove)  Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,  That gentle Maid! and oft, a moment's space,  What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,  Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon  Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky  With one sensation, and those wakeful birds  Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,  As if some sudden gale had swept at once  A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched  Many a nightingale perch giddily  On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,  And to that motion tune his wanton song  Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.    Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve,  And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!  We have been loitering long and pleasantly,  And now for our dear homes.—That strain again!  Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,  Who, capable of no articulate sound,  Mars all things with his imitative lisp,  How he would place his hand beside his ear,  His little hand, the small forefinger up,  And bid us listen! And I deem it wise  To make him Nature's play-mate. He knows well  The evening-star; and once, when he awoke  In most distressful mood (some inward pain  Had made up that strange thing, an infant's dream),  I hurried with him to our orchard-plot,  And he beheld the moon, and, hushed at once,  Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently,  While his fair eyes, that swam with undropped  tears,  Did glitter in the yellow moon-beam! Well!—  It is a father's tale: But if that Heaven  Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up  Familiar with these songs, that with the night  He may associate joy.—Once more, farewell,  Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends!  farewell.

THE EOLIAN HARP

COMPOSED AT CLEVEDON, SOMERSETSHIRE  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,  (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  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,  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  Over delicious surges sink and rise,  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,  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—  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  In Music slumbering on her instrument.  And thus, my love! as on the midway slope  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,  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  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  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  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  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!

1795.

THE PICTURE

OR THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION  Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood  I force my way; now climb, and now descend  O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot  Crushing the purple whorts;2 while oft unseen,  Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves,  The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil,  I know not, ask not whither! A new joy,  Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust,  And gladsome as the first-born of the spring,  Beckons me on, or follows from behind,  Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quelled,  I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark  The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak,  Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake  Soar up, and form a melancholy vault  High o'er me, murmuring like a distant sea.  Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse;  Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul,  And of this busy human heart aweary,  Worships the spirit of unconscious life  In tree or wild-flower.—Gentle lunatic!  If so he might not wholly cease to be,  He would far rather not be that he is;  But would be something that he knows not of,  In winds or waters, or among the rocks!  But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion  here!  No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves  Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood  He should stray hither, the low stumps shall  gore  His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn  Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded  bird  Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs,  Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades!  And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at  morn  The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs!  You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between  The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze,  Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon,  The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed—  Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp,  Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb.  Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes!  With prickles sharper than his darts bemock  His little Godship, making him perforce  Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's  back.  This is my hour of triumph! I can now  With my own fancies play the merry fool,  And laugh away worse folly, being free.  Here will I seat myself, beside this old,  Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine  Clothes as with net-work: here will couch my limbs,  Close by this river, in this silent shade,  As safe and sacred from the step of man  As an invisible world—unheard, unseen,  And listening only to the pebbly brook  That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound;  Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk  Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me,  Was never Love's accomplice, never raised  The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow,  And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek;  Ne'er played the wanton—never half disclosed  The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence  Eye-poisons for some love-distempered youth,  Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove  Shiver in sunshine, but his feeble heart  Shall flow away like a dissolving thing.  Sweet breeze! thou only, if I guess aright,  Liftest the feathers of the robin's breast,  That swells its little breast, so full of song,  Singing above me, on the mountain-ash.  And thou too, desert stream! no pool of thine,  Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve,  Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe,  The face, the form divine, the downcast look  Contemplative! Behold! her open palm  Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests  On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree,  That leans towards its mirror! Who erewhile  Had from her countenance turned, or looked by stealth  (For fear is true-love's cruel nurse), he now  With steadfast gaze and unoffending eye,  Worships the watery idol, dreaming hopes  Delicious to the soul, but fleeting, vain,  E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed,  But not unheeded gazed: for see, ah! see,  The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks  The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow,  Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove bells:  And suddenly, as one that toys with time,  Scatters them on the pool! Then all the charm  Is broken—all that phantom world so fair  Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,  And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile,  Poor youth, who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes!  The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon  The visions will return! And lo! he stays:  And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms  Come trembling back, unite, and now once more  The pool becomes a mirror; and behold  Each wildflower on the marge inverted there,  And there the half-uprooted tree—but where,  O where the virgin's snowy arm, that leaned  On its bare branch? He turns, and she is gone!  Homeward she steals through many a woodland maze  Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth!  Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime  In mad love-yearning by the vacant brook,  Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou  Behold'st her shadow still abiding there,  The Naiad of the mirror!  Not to thee,  O wild and desert stream! belongs this tale:  Gloomy and dark art thou-the crowded firs  Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed,  Making thee doleful as a cavern-well:  Save when the shy king-fishers build their nest  On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, wild stream!  This be my chosen haunt—emancipate  From passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone,  I rise and trace its devious course. O lead,  Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms.  Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs,  How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock,  Isle of the river, whose disparted waves  Dart off asunder with an angry sound,  How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet,  Each in the other lost and found: and see  Placeless, as spirits, one soft water-sun  Throbbing within them, heart at once and eye!  With its soft neighbourhood of filmy clouds,  The stains and shadings of forgotten tears,  Dimness o'erswum with lustre! Such the hour  Of deep enjoyment, following love's brief feuds;  And hark, the noise of a near waterfall!  I pass forth into light—I find myself  Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful  Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods),  Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock  That overbrows the cataract. How burst?  The landscape on my sight! Two crescent hills  Fold in behind each other, and so make  A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem,  With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages,  Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my feet,  The whortle-berries are bedewed with spray,  Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall.  How solemnly the pendent ivy-mass  Swings in its winnow: All the air is calm.  The smoke from cottage-chimneys, tinged with light,  Rises in columns; from this house alone,  Close by the waterfall, the column slants,  And feels its ceaseless breeze. But what is this?  That cottage, with its slanting chimney-smoke,  And close beside its porch a sleeping child,  His dear head pillow'd on a sleeping dog—  One arm between its fore-legs, and the hand  Holds loosely its small handful of wildflowers,  Unfilletted, and of unequal lengths.  A curious picture, with a master's haste  Sketched on a strip of pinky-silver skin,  Peeled from the birchen bark! Divinest maid!  Yon bark her canvas, and those purple berries  Her pencil! See, the juice is scarcely dried  On the fine skin! She has been newly here;  And lo! yon patch of heath has been her couch—  The pressure still remains! O blessed couch!  For this may'st thou flower early, and the sun,  Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long  Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel!  Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids!  More beautiful than whom Alcæus wooed,  The Lesbian woman of immortal song!  O child of genius! stately, beautiful,  And full of love to all, save only me,  And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart,  Why beats it thus? Through yonder coppicewood  Needs must the pathway turn, that leads straightway  On to her father's house. She is alone!  The night draws on-such ways are hard to hit—  And fit it is I should restore this sketch,  Dropt unawares no doubt. Why should I yearn  To keep the relique? 'twill but idly feed  The passion that consumes me. Let me haste!  The picture in my hand which she has left;  She cannot blame me that I follow'd her:  And I may be her guide the long wood through.

1802.