Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge

On whose black front was written Mystery; 330

She that reeled heavily, whose wine was blood;

She that worked whoredom with the Daemon Power,

And from the dark embrace all evil things

Brought forth and nurtured: mitred Atheism!

And patient Folly who on bended knee 335

Gives back the steel that stabbed him; and pale Fear

Haunted by ghastlier shapings than surround

Moon-blasted Madness when he yells at midnight!

Return pure Faith! return meek Piety!

The kingdoms of the world are your’s: each heart 340

Self-governed, the vast family of Love

Raised from the common earth by common toil

Enjoy the equal produce. Such delights

As float to earth, permitted visitants!

When in some hour of solemn jubilee 345

The massy gates of Paradise are thrown

Wide open, and forth come in fragments wild

Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies,

And odours snatched from beds of Amaranth,

And they, that from the crystal river of life 350

Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial gales!

The favoured good man in his lonely walk

Perceives them, and his silent spirit drinks

Strange bliss which he shall recognise in heaven.

And such delights, such strange beatitudes 355

Seize on my young anticipating heart

When that blest future rushes on my view!

For in his own and in his Father’s might

The Saviour comes! While as the Thousand Years

Lead up their mystic dance, the Desert shouts! 360

Old Ocean claps his hands! The mighty Dead

Rise to new life, whoe’er from earliest time

With conscious zeal had urged Love’s wondrous plan,

Coadjutors of God. To Milton’s trump

The high groves of the renovated Earth 365

Unbosom their glad echoes: inly hushed,

Adoring Newton his serener eye

Raises to heaven: and he of mortal kind

Wisest, he first who marked the ideal tribes

Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain. 370

Lo! Priestley there, patriot, and saint, and sage,

Him, full of years, from his loved native land

Statesmen bloodstained and priests idolatrous

By dark lies maddening the blind multitude

Drove with vain hate. Calm, pitying he retired, 375

And mused expectant on these promised years.

O Years! the blest preeminence of Saints!

Ye sweep athwart my gaze, so heavenly bright,

The wings that veil the adoring Seraphs’ eyes,

What time they bend before the Jasper Throne 380

Reflect no lovelier hues! Yet ye depart,

And all beyond is darkness! Heights most strange,

Whence Fancy falls, fluttering her idle wing.

For who of woman born may paint the hour,

When seized in his mid course, the Sun shall wane 385

Making noon ghastly! Who of woman born

May image in the workings of his thought,

How the black-visaged, red-eyed Fiend outstretched

Beneath the unsteady feet of Nature groans,

In feverous slumbers — destined then to wake, 390

When fiery whirlwinds thunder his dread name

And Angels shout, Destruction! How his arm

The last great Spirit lifting high in air

Shall swear by Him, the ever-living One,

Time is no more!

Believe thou, O my soul, 395

Life is a vision shadowy of Truth;

And vice, and anguish, and the wormy grave,

Shapes of a dream! The veiling clouds retire,

And lo! the Throne of the redeeming God

Forth flashing unimaginable day 400

Wraps in one blaze earth, heaven, and deepest hell.

Contemplant Spirits! ye that hover o’er

With untired gaze the immeasurable fount

Ebullient with creative Deity!

And ye of plastic power, that interfused 405

Roll through the grosser and material mass

In organizing surge! Holies of God!

(And what if Monads of the infinite mind?)

I haply journeying my immortal course

Shall sometime join your mystic choir! Till then 410

I discipline my young and novice thought

In ministeries of heart-stirring song,

And aye on Meditation’s heavenward wing

Soaring aloft I breathe the empyreal air

Of Love, omnific, omnipresent Love, 415

Whose dayspring rises glorious in my soul

As the great Sun, when he his influence

Sheds on the frost-bound waters — The glad stream

Flows to the ray and warbles as it flows.

Title] —— on Christmas Eve. In the year of Our Lord, 1794.

This is the time, when most divine to hear,

As with a Cherub’s ‘loud uplifted’ trump

The voice of Adoration my thrill’d heart

Rouses! And with the rushing noise of wings

Transports my spirit to the favor’d fields 5

Of Bethlehem, there in shepherd’s guise to sit

Sublime of extacy, and mark entranc’d

The glory-streaming VISION throng the night.

Ah not more radiant, nor loud harmonies

Hymning more unimaginably sweet 10

With choral songs around th’ ETERNAL MIND,

The constellated company of WORLDS

Danc’d jubilant: what time the startling East

Saw from her dark womb leap her flamy child!

Glory to God in the Highest! PEACE on Earth! 15

Yet thou more bright than all that Angel Blaze,

Despiséd GALILAEAN! Man of Woes!

For chiefly in the oppressed Good Man’s face

The Great Invisible (by symbols seen)

Shines with peculiar and concentred light, 20

When all of Self regardless the scourg’d Saint

Mourns for th’ oppressor. O thou meekest Man! 25

Meek Man and lowliest of the Sons of Men!

Who thee beheld thy imag’d Father saw.

His Power and Wisdom from thy awful eye

Blended their beams, and loftier Love sat there

Musing on human weal, and that dread hour 30

1796.

What mists dim-floating of Idolatry

Split and mishap’d the Omnipresent Sire:

And first by Terror, Mercy’s startling prelude,

Uncharm’d the Spirit spell-bound with earthy lusts.

1796.

They cannot dread created might, who love

God the Creator! fair and lofty thought!

It lifts and swells my heart! and as I muse,

Behold a VISION gathers in my soul,

Voices and shadowy shapes! In human guise

I seem to see the phantom, FEAR, pass by,

Hotly-pursued, and pale! From rock to rock

He bounds with bleeding feet, and thro’ the swamp,

The quicksand and the groaning wilderness,

Struggles with feebler and yet feebler flight.

But lo! an altar in the wilderness,

And eagerly yet feebly lo! he grasps

The altar of the living God! and there

With wan reverted face the trembling wretch

All wildly list’ning to his Hunter-fiends

Stands, till the last faint echo of their yell

Dies in the distance.

1803.

Swims in his eyes: his swimming eyes uprais’d:

And Faith’s whole armour girds his limbs! And thus

Transfigur’d, with a meek and dreadless awe,

A solemn hush of spirit he beholds

1803.

Yea, and there,

Unshudder’d unaghasted, he shall view

E’en the SEVEN SPIRITS, who in the latter day

Will shower hot pestilence on the sons of men,

For he shall know, his heart shall understand,

That kindling with intenser Deity

They from the MERCY-SEAT like rosy flames,

From God’s celestial MERCY-SEAT will flash,

And at the wells of renovating LOVE

Fill their Seven Vials with salutary wrath.

1796.

For even these on wings of healing come,

Yea, kindling with intenser Deity

From the Celestial MERCY SEAT they speed,

And at the renovating &c.

1803.

Darkling with earnest eyes he traces out

Th’ immediate road, all else of fairest kind

1803.

O Fiends of SUPERSTITION! not that oft

Your pitiless rites have floated with man’s blood