Samuel Coleridge - The Complete Poems of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition)

CATHOLIC REUNION

"Hence ( i.e. , from servile and thrall-like fear) men came to scan the Scriptures by the letter and in the covenant of our redemption magnified the external signs more than the quickening power of the Spirit."—Milton's Review of Church Government , vol. i. p. 2.

It were not an unpleasing fancy, nor one wholly unworthy of a serious and charitable Christianity, to derive a shadow of hope for the conversion and purification of the Roman Apostasy from the conduct and character of St. Peter as shadowing out the history of the Latin Church, whose ruling pastor calls himself the successor of that saint. Thus, by proud humility , he hazarded the loss of his heavenly portion in objecting to Christ's taking upon himself a lowly office and character of a servant (hence the pomps and vanities with which Rome has tricked out her bishops, &c.), the eager drawing of the fleshly sword in defence of Christ; the denying of Christ at the cross (in the apostasy); but, finally, his bitter repentance at the third crowing of the cock (perhaps Wickliffe and Huss the first, Luther the second, and the third yet to come-or, perhaps Wickliffe and Luther the first, the second may be the present state of humiliation, and the third yet to come). After this her eyes will be opened to the heavenly vision of the universal acceptance of Christ of all good men of all sects, that is, that faith is a moral, not an intellectual act.

THE IDEAL MARRIAGE

On some delightful day in early spring some of my countrymen hallow the anniversary of their marriage, and with love and fear go over the reckoning of the past and the unknown future. The wife tells with half-renewed modesty all the sweet feelings that she disguised and cherished in the courting-time; the man looks with a tear full in his eye and blesses the hour when for the first time (and oh! let it be the last) he spake deep and solemn to a beloved being—"Thou art mine and I am thine, and henceforward I shield and shelter [thee] against the world, and thy sorrows shall be my sorrows, and though abandoned by all men, we two will abide together in love and duty."

In the holy eloquent solitude where the very stars that twinkle seem to be a voice that suits the dream, a voice of a dream, a voice soundless and yet for the ear not the eye of the soul, when the winged soul passes over vale and mountain, sinks into glens, and then climbs with the cloud, and passes from cloud to cloud, and thence from sun to sun—never is she alone. Always one, the dearest, accompanies and even when he melts, diffused in the blue sky, she melts at the same moment into union with the beloved.

A SUPERFLUOUS ENTITY

That our religious faiths, by the instincts which lead us to metaphysical investigation, are founded in a practical necessity, not a mere intellectual craving after knowledge, and systematic conjecture, is evinced by the interest which all men take in the questions of future existence, and the being of God; while even among those who are speculative by profession a few phantasts only have troubled themselves with the questions of pre-existence, or with attempts to demonstrate the posse and esse of a devil. But in the latter case more is involved. Concerning pre-existence men in general have neither care nor belief; but a devil is taken for granted, and, if we might trust words, with the same faith as a Deity—"He neither believes God or devil." And yet, while we are delighted in hearing proofs of the one, we never think of asking a simple question concerning the other. This, too, originates in a practical source. The Deity is not a mere solution of difficulties concerning origination, but a truth which spreads light and joy and hope and certitude through all things—while a devil is a mere solution of an enigma, an assumption to silence our uneasiness. That end answered (and most easily are such ends answered), we have no further concern with it.

PSYCHOLOGY IN YOUTH AND MATURITY

The great change —that in youth and early manhood we psychologise and with enthusiasm but all out of ourselves, and so far ourselves only as we descry therein some general law. Our own self is but the diagram, the triangle which represents all triangles. Afterward we pyschologise out of others, and so far as they differ from ourselves. O how hollowly!

HAIL AND FAREWELL!

We have been for many years at a great distance from each other, but that may happen with no real breach of friendship. All intervening nature is the continuum of two good and wise men. We are now separated. You have combined arsenic with your gold, Sir Humphry! You are brittle, and I will rather dine with Duke Humphry than with you.

A GENUINE "ANECDOTE"

Sara Coleridge says, on telling me of the universal sneeze produced on the lasses while shaking my carpet, that she wishes my snuff would grow , as I sow it so plentifully!

[This points to the summer of 1810, the five months spent at Greta Hall previous to the departure south with Basil Montagu.]

SPIRITUAL RELIGION

A thing cannot be one and three at the same time! True! but time does not apply to God. He is neither one in time nor three in time, for he exists not in time at all—the Eternal!

The truly religious man, when he is not conveying his feelings and beliefs to other men, and does not need the medium of words—O! how little does he find in his religious sense either of form or of number—it is infinite ! Alas! why do we all seek by instinct for a God, a supersensual, but because we feel the insufficiency, the unsubstantiality of all forms , and formal being for itself. And shall we explain a by x and then x by a —give a soul to the body, and then a body to the soul— ergo , a body to the body—feel the weakness of the weak, and call in the strengthener, and then make the very weakness the substratum of the strength? This is worse than the poor Indian! Even he does not make the tortoise support the elephant, and yet put the elephant under the tortoise!

But we are too social, we become in a sort idolaters—for the means we are obliged to use to excite notions of truth in the minds of others we by witchcraft of slothful association impose on ourselves for the truths themselves. Our intellectual bank stops payment, and we pass an act by acclamation that hereafter the paper promises shall be the gold and silver itself—and ridicule a man for a dreamer and reviver of antiquated dreams who believes that gold and silver exist. This may do as well in the market, but O! for the universal, for the man himself the difference is woeful.

TRUTH

The immense difference between being glad to find Truth it , and to find it Truth! O! I am ashamed of those who praise me! For I know that as soon as I tell them my mind on another subject, they will shrink and abhor me. For not because I enforced a truth were they pleased in the first instance, but because I had supported a favourite notion of theirs which they loved for its and their sake, and therefore would be glad to find it true—not that loving Truth they loved this opinion as one of its forms and consequences. The root! the root must be attacked!

A TIME TO CRY OUT

Among the evils that attend a conscientious author who writes in a corrupt age, is the necessity he is under of exposing himself even to plausible charges of envy, mortified vanity, and, above all, of self-conceit before those whose bad passions would make even the most improbable charges plausible.

What can he do? Tell the truth, and the whole truth plainly, and with the natural affection which it inspires, and keeping off (difficult task!) all scorn (for to suppress resentment is easy), let him trust the bread to the waters in the firm faith that wisdom shall be justified by her children. Vanity! self-conceit! What vanity, what self-conceit? What say I more than this? Ye who think and feel the same will love and esteem me by the law of sympathy, and value me according to the comparative effect I have made on your intellectual powers, in enabling you better to defend before others, or more clearly to onlook ( anschauen ) in yourselves the truths to which your noblest being bears witness. The rest I leave to the judgment of posterity, utterly unconcerned whether my name be attached to these opinions or ( my writings forgotten) another man's.