Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The lustful murderess of her wedded lord!

And he, connatural Mind! whom (in their songs

So bards of elder time had haply feigned)

Some Fury fondled in her hate to man, 175

Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge

Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe

Horrible sympathy! And leagued with these

Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore!

Soul-hardened barterers of human blood! 180

Death’s prime slave-merchants! Scorpion-whips of Fate!

Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,

Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,

Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons!

Thee to defend the Moloch Priest prefers 185

The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd,

That Deity, Accomplice Deity

In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath

Will go forth with our armies and our fleets

To scatter the red ruin on their foes! 190

O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds

With blessedness!

Lord of unsleeping Love,

From everlasting Thou! We shall not die.

These, even these, in mercy didst thou form,

Teachers of Good through Evil, by brief wrong 195

Making Truth lovely, and her future might

Magnetic o’er the fixed untrembling heart.

In the primeval age a dateless while

The vacant Shepherd wander’d with his flock,

Pitching his tent where’er the green grass waved. 200

But soon Imagination conjured up

An host of new desires: with busy aim,

Each for himself, Earth’s eager children toiled.

So Property began, twy-streaming fount,

Whence Vice and Virtue flow, honey and gall. 205

Hence the soft couch, and many-coloured robe,

The timbrel, and arched dome and costly feast,

With all the inventive arts, that nursed the soul

To forms of beauty, and by sensual wants

Unsensualised the mind, which in the means 210

Learnt to forget the grossness of the end,

Best pleasured with its own activity.

And hence Disease that withers manhood’s arm,

The daggered Envy, spirit-quenching Want,

Warriors, and Lords, and Priests — all the sore ills 215

That vex and desolate our mortal life.

Wide-wasting ills! yet each the immediate source

Of mightier good. Their keen necessities

To ceaseless action goading human thought

Have made Earth’s reasoning animal her Lord; 220

And the pale-featured Sage’s trembling hand

Strong as an host of arméd Deities,

Such as the blind Ionian fabled erst.

From Avarice thus, from Luxury and War

Sprang heavenly Science; and from Science Freedom. 225

O’er waken’d realms Philosophers and Bards

Spread in concentric circles: they whose souls,

Conscious of their high dignities from God,

Brook not Wealth’s rivalry! and they, who long

Enamoured with the charms of order, hate 230

The unseemly disproportion: and whoe’er

Turn with mild sorrow from the Victor’s car

And the low puppetry of thrones, to muse

On that blest triumph, when the Patriot Sage

Called the red lightnings from the o’er-rushing cloud 235

And dashed the beauteous terrors on the earth

Smiling majestic. Such a phalanx ne’er

Measured firm paces to the calming sound

Of Spartan flute! These on the fated day,

When, stung to rage by Pity, eloquent men 240

Have roused with pealing voice the unnumbered tribes

That toil and groan and bleed, hungry and blind —

These, hush’d awhile with patient eye serene,

Shall watch the mad careering of the storm;

Then o’er the wild and wavy chaos rush 245

And tame the outrageous mass, with plastic might

Moulding Confusion to such perfect forms,

As erst were wont, — bright visions of the day! —

To float before them, when, the summer noon,

Beneath some arched romantic rock reclined 250

They felt the sea-breeze lift their youthful locks;

Or in the month of blossoms, at mild eve,

Wandering with desultory feet inhaled

The wafted perfumes, and the flocks and woods

And many-tinted streams and setting sun 255

With all his gorgeous company of clouds

Ecstatic gazed! then homeward as they strayed

Cast the sad eye to earth, and inly mused

Why there was misery in a world so fair.

Ah! far removed from all that glads the sense, 260

From all that softens or ennobles Man,

The wretched Many! Bent beneath their loads

They gape at pageant Power, nor recognise

Their cots’ transmuted plunder! From the tree

Of Knowledge, ere the vernal sap had risen 265

Rudely disbranchéd! Blessed Society!

Fitliest depictured by some sun-scorched waste,

Where oft majestic through the tainted noon

The Simoom sails, before whose purple pomp

Who falls not prostrate dies! And where by night, 270

Fast by each precious fountain on green herbs

The lion couches: or hyaena dips

Deep in the lucid stream his bloody jaws;

Or serpent plants his vast moon-glittering bulk,

Caught in whose monstrous twine Behemoth yells, 275

His bones loud-crashing!

O ye numberless,

Whom foul Oppression’s ruffian gluttony

Drives from Life’s plenteous feast! O thou poor Wretch

Who nursed in darkness and made wild by want,

Roamest for prey, yea thy unnatural hand 280

Dost lift to deeds of blood! O pale-eyed form,

The victim of seduction, doomed to know

Polluted nights and days of blasphemy;

Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers

Must gaily laugh, while thy remembered Home 285

Gnaws like a viper at thy secret heart!

O agéd Women! ye who weekly catch

The morsel tossed by law-forced charity,

And die so slowly, that none call it murder!

O loathly suppliants! ye, that unreceived 290

Totter heart-broken from the closing gates

Of the full Lazar-house; or, gazing, stand,

Sick with despair! O ye to Glory’s field

Forced or ensnared, who, as ye gasp in death,

Bleed with new wounds beneath the vulture’s beak! 295

O thou poor widow, who in dreams dost view

Thy husband’s mangled corse, and from short doze

Start’st with a shriek; or in thy half-thatched cot

Waked by the wintry night-storm, wet and cold

Cow’rst o’er thy screaming baby! Rest awhile 300

Children of Wretchedness! More groans must rise,

More blood must stream, or ere your wrongs be full.

Yet is the day of Retribution nigh:

The Lamb of God hath opened the fifth seal:

And upward rush on swiftest wing of fire 305

The innumerable multitude of wrongs

By man on man inflicted! Rest awhile,

Children of Wretchedness! The hour is nigh

And lo! the Great, the Rich, the Mighty Men,

The Kings and the Chief Captains of the World, 310

With all that fixed on high like stars of Heaven

Shot baleful influence, shall be cast to earth,

Vile and down-trodden, as the untimely fruit

Shook from the fig-tree by a sudden storm.

Even now the storm begins: each gentle name, 315

Faith and meek Piety, with fearful joy

Tremble far-off — for lo! the Giant Frenzy

Uprooting empires with his whirlwind arm

Mocketh high Heaven; burst hideous from the cell

Where the old Hag, unconquerable, huge, 320

Creation’s eyeless drudge, black Ruin, sits

Nursing the impatient earthquake.

O return!

Pure Faith! meek Piety! The abhorréd Form

Whose scarlet robe was stiff with earthly pomp,

Who drank iniquity in cups of gold, 325

Whose names were many and all blasphemous,

Hath met the horrible judgment! Whence that cry?

The mighty army of foul Spirits shrieked

Disherited of earth! For she hath fallen