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

Their pleasant Indian Town

To gather strawberries all day long,

Returning with a choral song

When daylight is gone down.

He spake of plants divine and strange

That ev’ry day their blossoms change,

Ten thousand lovely hues!

With budding, fading, faded flowers

They stand the wonder of the bowers

From morn to evening dews.

He told of the Magnolia, spread

High as a cloud, high over head!

The Cypress and her spire,

Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam

Cover a hundred leagues and seem

To set the hills on fire.

The Youth of green Savannahs spake,

And many an endless endless lake

With all its fairy crowds

Of islands that together lie

As quietly as spots of sky

Among the evening clouds:

And then he said “How sweet it were

A fisher or a hunter there,

A gardener in the shade,

Still wandering with an easy mind

To build a household fire and find

A home in every glade.”

”What days and what sweet years! Ah me!

Our life were life indeed, with thee

So pass’d in quiet bliss,

And all the while” said he “to know

That we were in a world of woe.

On such an earth as this!”

And then he sometimes interwove

Dear thoughts about a Father’s love,

”For there,” said he, “are spun

Around the heart such tender ties

That our own children to our eyes

Are dearer than the sun.”

Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me

My helpmate in the woods to be,

Our shed at night to rear;

Or run, my own adopted bride,

A sylvan huntress at my side

And drive the flying deer.

”Beloved Ruth!” No more he said

Sweet Ruth alone at midnight shed

A solitary tear,

She thought again — and did agree

With him to sail across the sea,

And drive the flying deer.

”And now, as fitting is and right,

We in the Church our faith will plight,

A Husband and a Wife.”

Even so they did; and I may say

That to sweet Ruth that happy day

Was more than human life.

Through dream and vision did she sink,

Delighted all the while to think

That on those lonesome floods

And green Savannahs she should share

His board with lawful joy, and bear

His name in the wild woods.

But, as you have before been told,

This Stripling, sportive gay and bold,

And, with his dancing crest,

So beautiful, through savage lands

Had roam’d about with vagrant bands

Of Indians in the West.

The wind, the tempest roaring high,

The tumult of a tropic sky

Might well be dangerous food.

For him, a Youth to whom was given

So much of earth so much of Heaven,

And such impetuous blood.

Whatever in those climes he found

Irregular in sight or sound

Did to his mind impart

A kindred impulse, seem’d allied

To his own powers, and justified

The workings of his heart.

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought

The beauteous forms of Nature wrought,

Fair trees and lovely flowers;

The breezes their own languor lent,

The stars had feelings which they sent

Into those magic bowers.

Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween,

That sometimes there did intervene

Pure hopes of high intent:

For passions link’d to forms so fair

And stately, needs must have their share

Of noble sentiment.

But ill he liv’d, much evil saw

With men to whom no better law

Nor better life was known;

Deliberately and undeceiv’d

Those wild men’s vices he receiv’d,

And gave them back his own.

His genius and his moral frame

Were thus impair’d, and he became

The slave of low desires;

A man who without self-controul

Would seek what the degraded soul

Unworthily admires.

And yet he with no feign’d delight

Had woo’d the Maiden, day and night

Had luv’d her, night and morn;

What could he less than love a Maid

Whose heart with so much nature play’d

So kind and so forlorn?

But now the pleasant dream was gone,

No hope, no wish remain’d, not one,

They stirr’d him now no more,

New objects did new pleasure give,

And once again he wish’d to live

As lawless as before.

Meanwhile as thus with him it fared.

They for the voyage were prepared

And went to the seashore,

But, when they thither came, the Youth

Deserted his poor Bride, and Ruth

Could never find him more.

”God help thee Ruth!” — Such pains she had

That she in half a year was mad

And in a prison hous’d,

And there, exulting in her wrongs,

Among the music of her songs

She fearfully carouz’d.

Yet sometimes milder hours she knew,

Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew,

Nor pastimes of the May,

They all were with her in her cell,

And a wild brook with chearful knell

Did o’er the pebbles play.

When Ruth three seasons thus had lain

There came a respite to her pain,

She from her prison fled;

But of the Vagrant none took thought,

And where it liked her best she sought

Her shelter and her bread.

Among the fields she breath’d again:

The master-current of her brain

Ran permanent and free,

And to the pleasant Banks of Tone

She took her way, to dwell alone

Under the greenwood tree.

The engines of her grief, the tools

That shap’d her sorrow, rocks and pools,

And airs that gently stir

The vernal leaves, she loved them still,

Nor ever tax’d them with the ill

Which had been done to her.

A Barn her winter bed supplies,

But till the warmth of summer skies

And summer days is gone,

(And in this tale we all agree)

She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree,

And other home hath none.

If she is press’d by want of food

She from her dwelling in the wood

Repairs to a road side,

And there she begs at one steep place,

Where up and down with easy pace

The horsemen-travellers ride.

That oaten pipe of hers is mute

Or thrown away, but with a flute

Her loneliness she cheers;

This flute made of a hemlock stalk

At evening in his homeward walk

The Quantock Woodman hears.

I, too have pass’d her on the hills

Setting her little water-mills

By spouts and fountains wild,

Such small machinery as she turn’d

Ere she had wept, ere she had mourn’d

A young and happy Child!

Farewel! and when thy days are told

Illfated Ruth! in hallow’d mold

Thy corpse shall buried be,

For thee a funeral bell shall ring,

And all the congregation sing

A Christian psalm for thee.

Table of Contents

Stranger! this hillock of mishapen stones

Is not a ruin of the ancient time,

Nor, as perchance thou rashly deem’st, the Cairn

Of some old British Chief: ‘tis nothing more

Than the rude embryo of a little dome

Or pleasure-house, which was to have been built

Among the birch-trees of this rocky isle.

But, as it chanc’d, Sir William having learn’d

That from the shore a full-grown man might wade,

And make himself a freeman of this spot

At any hour he chose, the Knight forthwith

Desisted, and the quarry and the mound

Are monuments of his unfinish’d task. —

The block on which these lines are trac’d, perhaps,

Was once selected as the cornerstone