Poems of Coleridge

FORBEARANCE

Beareth all things.—2 COR. xiii.7.

  Gently I took that which ungently came,  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,  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  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—  Give him the rotten timber for his pains!

1832.

SANCTI DOMINICI PALLIUM

A DIALOGUE BETWEEN POET AND FRIENDFOUND WRITTEN ON THE BLANK LEAF AT THE BEGINNING OF BUTLER'S "BOOK OF THE CHURCH" (1825)POET  I note the moods and feelings men betray,  And heed them more than aught they do or say;  The lingering ghosts of many a secret deed  Still-born or haply strangled in its birth;  These best reveal the smooth man's inward creed!  These mark the spot where lies the treasure Worth!  Butler made up of impudence and trick,  With cloven tongue prepared to hiss and lick,  Rome's brazen serpent—boldly dares discuss  The roasting of thy heart, O brave John Huss!  And with grim triumph and a truculent glee  Absolves anew the Pope-wrought perfidy,  That made an empire's plighted faith a lie,  And fix'd a broad stare on the Devil's eye—  (Pleased with the guilt, yet envy-stung at heart  To stand outmaster'd in his own black art!)  Yet Butler-FRIEND    Enough of Butler! we're agreed,  Who now defends would then have done the deed.  But who not feels persuasion's gentle sway,  Who but must meet the proffer'd hand half way  When courteous Butler—POET (aside)(Rome's smooth go-between!)FRIEND    Laments the advice that sour'd a milky queen—  (For "bloody" all enlighten'd men confess  An antiquated error of the press:)  Who, rapt by zeal beyond her sex's bounds,  With actual cautery staunch'd the Church's wounds!  And tho' he deems, that with too broad a blur  We damn the French and Irish massacre,  Yet blames them both—and thinks the Pope might err!  What think you now? Boots it with spear and shield  Against such gentle foes to take the field  Whose beckoning hands the mild Caduceus wield?POET    What think I now? Even what I thought before;—  What Butler boasts though Butler may deplore,  Still I repeat, words lead me not astray  When the shown feeling points a different way.  Smooth Butler can say grace at slander's feast,  And bless each haut-gout cook'd by monk or priest;  Leaves the full lie on Butler's gong to swell,  Content with half-truths that do just as well;  But duly decks his mitred comrade's flanks,  And with him shares the Irish nation's thanks!    So much for you, my friend! who own a Church,  And would not leave your mother in the lurch!  But when a Liberal asks me what I think—  Scared by the blood and soot of Cobbett's ink,  And Jeffrey's glairy phlegm and Connor's foam,  In search of some safe parable I roam—  An emblem sometimes may comprise a tome!    Disclaimant of his uncaught grandsire's mood,  I see a tiger lapping kitten's food:  And who shall blame him that he purs applause,  When brother Brindle pleads the good old cause;  And frisks his pretty tail, and half unsheathes his claws!  Yet not the less, for modern lights unapt,  I trust the bolts and cross-bars of the laws  More than the Protestant milk all newly lapt,  Impearling a tame wild-cat's whisker'd jaws!

1825, or 1826.

ON DONNE'S POETRY

  With Donne, whose muse on dromedary trots,  Wreathe iron pokers into true-love knots;  Rhyme's sturdy cripple, fancy's maze and clue,  Wit's forge and fire-blast, meaning's press and screw.

?1818.

ON A BAD SINGER

  Swans sing before they die—'twere no bad thing  Should certain persons die before they sing.

NE PLUS ULTRA

            Sole Positive of Night!            Antipathist of Light!  Fate's only essence! primal scorpion rod—  The one permitted opposite of God!—  Condensed blackness and abysmal storm        Compacted to one sceptre          Arms the Grasp enorm—            The Interceptor—  The Substance that still casts the shadow          Death!—        The Dragon foul and fell—          The unrevealable,  And hidden one, whose breath  Gives wind and fuel to the fires of Hell!—        Ah! sole despair      Of both the eternities in Heaven!  Sole interdict of all-bedewing prayer,        The all-compassionate!      Save to the Lampads Seven  Reveal'd to none of all the Angelic State,      Save to the Lampads Seven,      That watch the throne of Heaven!

?1826.

HUMAN LIFE

ON THE DENIAL OF IMMORTALITY  If dead, we cease to be; if total gloom    Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare  As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,    Whose sound and motion not alone declare,  But are their whole of being! If the breath    Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,  If even a soul like Milton's can know death;    O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,  Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!    Surplus of Nature's dread activity,  Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,  Retreating slow, with meditative pause,    She formed with restless hands unconsciously.  Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!    If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,  Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,  The counter-weights!—Thy laughter and thy tears    Mean but themselves, each fittest to create  And to repay each other! Why rejoices    Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?    Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood,  Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,    Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,  That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?  Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold    These costless shadows of thy shadowy self?  Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!  Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none;  Thy being's being is contradiction.

?1815.

THE BUTTERFLY

  The Butterfly the ancient Grecians made  The soul's fair emblem, and its only name—  But of the soul, escaped the slavish trade  Of earthly life!—For in this mortal frame  Our's is the reptile's lot, much toil, much blame,  Manifold motions making little speed,  And to deform and kill the things whereon we feed.

?1815.

THE PANG MORE SHARP THAN ALL

AN ALLEGORYI  He too has flitted from his secret nest,  Hope's last and dearest child without a name!—  Has flitted from me, like the warmthless flame,  That makes false promise of a place of rest  To the tired Pilgrim's still believing mind;—  Or like some Elfin Knight in kingly court,  Who having won all guerdons in his sport,  Glides out of view, and whither none can find!II  Yes! he hath flitted from me—with what aim,  Or why, I know not! 'Twas a home of bliss,  And he was innocent, as the pretty shame  Of babe, that tempts and shuns the menaced kiss,  From its twy-cluster'd hiding place of snow!  Pure as the babe, I ween, and all aglow  As the dear hopes, that swell the mother's breast—  Her eyes down gazing o'er her clasped charge;—  Yet gay as that twice happy father's kiss,  That well might glance aside, yet never miss,  Where the sweet mark emboss'd so sweet a targe—  Twice wretched he who hath been doubly blest!III  Like a loose blossom on a gusty night  He flitted from me—and has left behind  (As if to them his faith he ne'er did plight)  Of either sex and answerable mind  Two playmates, twin-births of his foster-dame:—  The one a steady lad (Esteem he hight)  And Kindness is the gentler sister's name.  Dim likeness now, though fair she be and good,  Of that bright boy who hath us all forsook;—  But in his full-eyed aspect when she stood,  And while her face reflected every look,  And in reflection kindled—she became  So like him, that almost she seem'd the same!IV  Ah! he is gone, and yet will not depart!—  Is with me still, yet I from him exiled!  For still there lives within my secret heart  The magic image of the magic Child,  Which there he made up-grow by his strong art,  As in that crystal orb—wise Merlin's feat,—  The wondrous "World of Glass," wherein inisled  All long'd for things their beings did repeat;—  And there he left it, like a Sylph beguiled,  To live and yearn and languish incomplete!V  Can wit of man a heavier grief reveal?  Can sharper pang from hate or scorn arise?—  Yes! one more sharp there is that deeper lies,  Which fond Esteem but mocks when he would heal.  Yet neither scorn nor hate did it devise,  But sad compassion and atoning zeal!  One pang more blighting-keen than hope betray'd!  And this it is my woeful hap to feel,  When, at her Brother's hest, the twin-born Maid  With face averted and unsteady eyes,  Her truant playmate's faded robe puts on;  And inly shrinking from her own disguise  Enacts the faery Boy that's lost and gone.  O worse than all! O pang all pangs above  Is Kindness counterfeiting absent Love!

?1811

THE VISIONARY HOPE

  Sad lot, to have no Hope! Though lowly kneeling  He fain would frame a prayer within his breast,  Would fain entreat for some sweet breath of healing,  That his sick body might have ease and rest;  He strove in vain! the dull sighs from his chest  Against his will the stifling load revealing,  Though Nature forced; though like some captive guest,  Some royal prisoner at his conqueror's feast,  An alien's restless mood but half concealing,  The sternness on his gentle brow confessed,  Sickness within and miserable feeling:  Though obscure pangs made curses of his dreams,  And dreaded sleep, each night repelled in vain,  Each night was scattered by its own loud screams:  Yet never could his heart command, though fain,  One deep full wish to be no more in pain.    That Hope, which was his inward bliss and boast,  Which waned and died, yet ever near him stood,  Though changed in nature, wander where he would—  For Love's Despair is but Hope's pining Ghost!  For this one hope he makes his hourly moan,  He wishes and can wish for this alone!  Pierced, as with light from Heaven, before its gleams  (So the love-stricken visionary deems)  Disease would vanish, like a summer shower,  Whose dews fling sunshine from the noon-tide bower!  Or let it stay! yet this one Hope should give  Such strength that he would bless his pains and live.

?1807 ?181O.

THE PAINS OF SLEEP

  Ere on my bed my limbs I lay,  It hath not been my use to pray  With moving lips or bended knees;  But silently, by slow degrees,  My spirit I to Love compose,  In humble trust mine eye-lids close,  With reverential resignation,  No wish conceived, no thought exprest,  Only a sense of supplication;  A sense o'er all my soul imprest  That I am weak, yet not unblest,  Since in me, round me, everywhere  Eternal Strength and Wisdom are.  But yester-night I pray'd aloud  In anguish and in agony,  Up-starting from the fiendish crowd  Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me:  A lurid light, a trampling throng,  Sense of intolerable wrong,  And whom I scorned, those only strong!  Thirst of revenge, the powerless will  Still baffled, and yet burning still!  Desire with loathing strangely mixed  On wild or hateful objects fixed.  Fantastic passions! maddening brawl!  And shame and terror over all!  Deeds to be hid which were not hid,  Which all confused I could not know  Whether I suffered, or I did:  For all seem'd guilt, remorse or woe,  My own or others still the same  Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame!  So two nights passed: the night's dismay  Saddened and stunned the coming day.  Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me  Distemper's worst calamity.  The third night, when my own loud scream  Had waked me from the fiendish dream,  O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild,  I wept as I had been a child;  And having thus by tears subdued  My anguish to a milder mood,  Such punishments, I said, were due  To natures deepliest stained with sin:  For aye entempesting anew  The unfathomable hell within  The horror of their deeds to view,  To know and loathe, yet wish and do!  Such griefs with such men well agree,  But wherefore, wherefore fall on me?  To be beloved is all I need,  And whom I love, I love indeed.

1803.

LOVE'S BURIAL-PLACE

    Lady. If Love be dead—    Poet. And I aver it!    Lady. Tell me, Bard! where Love lies buried    Poet. Love lies buried where 'twas born:  Oh, gentle dame! think it no scorn  If, in my fancy, I presume  To call thy bosom poor Love's Tomb.  And on that tomb to read the line:—  "Here lies a Love that once seem'd mine.  But took a chill, as I divine,  And died at length of a decline."

1833.

LOVE, A SWORD

  Though veiled in spires of myrtle-wreath,  Love is a sword which cuts its sheath,  And through the clefts itself has made,  We spy the flashes of the blade!  But through the clefts itself has made,  We likewise see Love's flashing blade  By rust consumed, or snapt in twain:  And only hilt and stump remain.

?1825.

THE KISS

  One kiss, dear Maid! I said and sighed—  Your scorn the little boon denied.  Ah why refuse the blameless bliss?  Can danger lurk within a kiss?  Yon viewless wanderer of the vale,  The Spirit of the Western Gale,  At Morning's break, at Evening's close  Inhales the sweetness of the Rose,  And hovers o'er the uninjured bloom  Sighing back the soft perfume.  Vigour to the Zephyr's wing  Her nectar-breathing kisses fling;  And He the glitter of the Dew  Scatters on the Rose's hue.  Bashful lo! she bends her head,  And darts a blush of deeper Red!  Too well those lovely lips disclose  The triumphs of the opening Rose;  O fair! O graceful! bid them prove  As passive to the breath of Love.  In tender accents, faint and low,  Well-pleased I hear the whispered "No!"  The whispered "No"—how little meant!  Sweet Falsehood that endears Consent!  For on those lovely lips the while  Dawns the soft relenting smile,  And tempts with feigned dissuasion coy  The gentle violence of Joy.

?1794.

NOT AT HOME

  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,    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  Their mistress has lain down to sleep,    And can't just then be seen.

?183O.

NAMES

[FROM LESSING]  I ask'd my fair one happy day,  What I should call her in my lay;    By what sweet name from Rome or Greece;  Lalage, Nesera, Chloris,  Sappho, Lesbia, or Doris,    Arethusa or Lucrece.  "Ah!" replied my gentle fair,  "Beloved, what are names but air?   Choose thou whatever suits the line;  Call me Sappho, call me Chloris,  Call me Lalage or Doris,    Only, only call me Thine."

Morning Post, August 27,1799.

TO LESBIA

Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus.—CATULLUS.

  My Lesbia, let us love and live,  And to the winds, my Lesbia, give  Each cold restraint, each boding fear  Of age and all her saws severe.  Yon sun now posting to the main  Will set,—but 'tis to rise again;—  But we, when once our mortal light  Is set, must sleep in endless night.  Then come, with whom alone I'll live,  A thousand kisses take and give!  Another thousand!—to the store  Add hundreds—then a thousand more!  And when they to a million mount,  Let confusion take the account,—  That you, the number never knowing,  May continue still bestowing—  That I for joys may never pine,  Which never can again be mine!

Morning Post, April 11, 1798.

THE DEATH OF THE STARLING

Lugete, O Veneres, Cupidinesque.—CATULLUS.

  Pity! mourn in plaintive tone  The lovely starling dead and gone!    Pity mourns in plaintive tone  The lovely starling dead and gone.  Weep, ye Loves! and Venus! weep  The lovely starling fall'n asleep!  Venus sees with tearful eyes—  In her lap the starling lies!  While the Loves all in a ring  Softly stroke the stiffen'd wing.

?1794.

ON A CATARACT

FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE [AFTER STOLBERG'S UNSTERBLICHER JÜNGLING]STROPHE  Unperishing youth!  Thou leapest from forth  The cell of thy hidden nativity;  Never mortal saw  The cradle of the strong one;  Never mortal heard  The gathering of his voices;  The deep-murmur'd charm of the son of the rock,  That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.  There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil  At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;  It embosoms the roses of dawn,  It entangles the shafts of the noon,  And into the bed of its stillness  The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,  That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven  May be born in a holy twilight!ANTISTROPHE  The wild goat in awe  Looks up and beholds  Above thee the cliff inaccessible;—  Thou at once full-born  Madd'nest in thy joyance,  Whirlest, shatter'st, splitt'st,  Life invulnerable.

?1799.

HYMN TO THE EARTH

[IMITATED FROM STOLBERG'S HYMNE AN DIE EKDE]HEXAMETERS  Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the mother,  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 eyes—green 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,  Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,  Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he woo'd thee and won thee!  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.

?1799.

THE VISIT OF THE GODS

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER          Never, believe me,          Appear the Immortals,            Never alone:  Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,  Iacchus! but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler;  Lo! Phoebus the Glorious descends from his throne!  They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!        With Divinities fills my            Terrestrial hall!          How shall I yield you          Due entertainment,            Celestial quire?  Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance  Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,  That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!  Hah! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul!          O give me the nectar!            O fill me the bowl!          Give him the nectar!          Pour out for the poet,               Hebe! pour free!  Quicken his eyes with celestial dew,  That Styx the detested no more he may view,  And like one of us Gods may conceit him to be!  Thanks, Hebe! I quaff it! Io Pæan, I cry!          The wine of the Immortals            Forbids me to die!

? 1799.

TRANSLATION OF A PASSAGE IN OTTFRIED'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE OF THE GOSPEL

  She gave with joy her virgin breast;  She hid it not, she bared the breast  Which suckled that divinest babe!  Blessed, blessed were the breasts  Which the Saviour infant kiss'd;  And blessed, blessed was the mother  Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes,  Singing placed him on her lap,  Hung o'er him with her looks of love,  And soothed him with a lulling motion.  Blessed! for she shelter'd him  From the damp and chilling air;  Blessed, blessed! for she lay  With such a bade in one blest bed,  Close as babes and mothers lie!  Blessed, blessed evermore,  With her virgin lips she kiss'd,  With her arms, and to her breast,  She embraced the babe divine,  Her babe divine the virgin mother!  There lives not on this ring of earth  A mortal that can sing her praise.  Mighty mother, virgin pure,  In the darkness and the night  For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

? 1799.

THE VIRGIN'S CRADLE-HYMN

COPIED FROM A PRINT OF THE VIRGIN IN A CATHOLIC VILLAGE IN GERMANY  Dormi, Jesu! Mater ridet  Quæ tarn dulcem somnum videt,    Dormi, Jesu! blandule!  Si non dormis, Mater plorat,  Inter fila cantans orat,  Blande, veni, somnule.ENGLISH  Sleep, sweet babe! my cares beguiling:  Mother sits beside thee smiling;   Sleep, my darling, tenderly!  If thou sleep not, mother mourneth,  Singing as her wheel she turneth:    Come, soft slumber, balmily!

1811.

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT

  Ere Sin could blight or Sorrow fade,    Death came with friendly care;  The opening bud to Heaven conveyed,    And bade it blossom there.

1794.

ON AN INFANT WHICH DIED BEFORE BAPTISM

  "Be, rather than be call'd, a child of God,"  Death whisper'd!—with assenting nod,  Its head upon its mother's breast,    The Baby bow'd, without demur—  Of the kingdom of the Blest    Possessor, not inheritor.

April 8th, 1799.

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT

  Its balmy lips the infant blest  Relaxing from its mother's breast,  How sweet it heaves the happy sigh  Of innocent satiety!  And such my infant's latest sigh!  Oh tell, rude stone! the passer by,  That here the pretty babe doth lie,  Death sang to sleep with Lullaby.

1799.

AN ODE TO THE RAIN

COMPOSED BEFORE DAYLIGHT, ON THE MORNING APPOINTED FOR THE DEPARTURE OF A VERY WORTHY, BUT NOT VERY PLEASANT VISITOR, WHOM IT WAS FEARED THE RAIN MIGHT DETAINI  I know it is dark; and though I have lain,  Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain,  I have not once open'd the lids of my eyes,  But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies.  O Rain! that I lie listening to,  You're but a doleful sound at best:  I owe you little thanks,'tis true,  For breaking thus my needful rest!  Yet if, as soon as it is light,  O Rain! you will but take your flight,  I'll neither rail, nor malice keep,  Though sick and sore for want of sleep.  But only now, for this one day,  Do go, dear Rain! do go away!II  O Rain! with your dull two-fold sound,  The clash hard by, and the murmur all round!  You know, if you know aught, that we,  Both night and day, but ill agree:  For days and months, and almost years,  Have limp'd on through this vale of tears,  Since body of mine, and rainy weather,  Have lived on easy terms together.  Yet if, as soon as it is light,  O Rain! you will but take your flight,  Though you should come again to-morrow,  And bring with you both pain and sorrow;  Though stomach should sicken and knees should swell—  I'll nothing speak of you but well.  But only now for this one day,  Do go, dear Rain! do go away!III  Dear Rain! I ne'er refused to say  You're a good creature in your way;  Nay, I could write a book myself,  Would fit a parson's lower shelf,  Showing how very good you are. —  What then? sometimes it must be fair!  And if sometimes, why not to-day?  Do go, dear Rain! do go away!IV  Dear Rain! if I've been cold and shy,  Take no offence! I'll tell you why.  A dear old Friend e'en now is here,  And with him came my sister dear;  After long absence now first met,  Long months by pain and grief beset—  We three dear friends! in truth, we groan  Impatiently to be alone.  We three, you mark! and not one more!  The strong wish makes my spirit sore.  We have so much to talk about,  So many sad things to let out;  So many tears in our eye-corners,  Sitting like little Jacky Homers—  In short, as soon as it is day,  Do go, dear Rain! do go away!V  And this I'll swear to you, dear Rain!  Whenever you shall come again,  Be you as dull as e'er you could  (And by the bye 'tis understood,  You're not so pleasant as you're good),  Yet, knowing well your worth and place,  I'll welcome you with cheerful face;  And though you stay'd a week or more,  Were ten times duller than before;  Yet with kind heart, and right good will,  I'll sit and listen to you still;  Nor should you go away, dear Rain!  Uninvited to remain.  But only now, for this one day,  Do go, dear Rain! do go away!

1802.