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

Of reason, yet prepares that after joy

Which reason cherishes. And thus the soul,

By that sweet taste of pleasure unpursu’d

Doth find itself insensibly dispos’d

To virtue and true goodness. Some there are,

By their good works exalted, lofty minds

And meditative, authors of delight

And happiness, which to the end of time

Will live, and spread, and kindle; minds like these,

In childhood, from this solitary being,

This helpless wanderer, have perchance receiv’d,

(A thing more precious far than all that books

Or the solicitudes of love can do!)

That first mild touch of sympathy and thought,

In which they found their kindred with a world

Where want and sorrow were. The easy man

Who sits at his own door, and like the pear

Which overhangs his head from the green wall,

Feeds in the sunshine; the robust and young,

The prosperous and unthinking, they who live

Shelter’d, and flourish in a little grove

Of their own kindred, all behold in him

A silent monitor, which on their minds

Must needs impress a transitory thought

Of self-congratulation, to the heart

Of each recalling his peculiar boons,

His charters and exemptions; and perchance,

Though he to no one give the fortitude

And circumspection needful to preserve

His present blessings, and to husband up

The respite of the season, he, at least,

And ‘tis no vulgar service, makes them felt.

Yet further. — Many, I believe, there are

Who live a life of virtuous decency,

Men who can hear the Decalogue and feel

No self-reproach, who of the moral law

Establish’d in the land where they abide

Are strict observers, and not negligent,

Meanwhile, in any tenderness of heart

Or act of love to those with whom they dwell,

Their kindred, and the children of their blood.

Praise be to such, and to their slumbers peace!

— But of the poor man ask, the abject poor,

Go and demand of him, if there be here,

In this cold abstinence from evil deeds,

And these inevitable charities,

Wherewith to satisfy the human soul.

No — man is dear to man: the poorest poor

Long for some moments in a weary life

When they can know and feel that they have been

Themselves the fathers and the dealers out

Of some small blessings, have been kind to such

As needed kindness, for this single cause,

That we have all of us one human heart.

— Such pleasure is to one kind Being known

My Neighbour, when with punctual care, each week

Duly as Friday comes, though press’d herself

By her own wants, she from her chest of meal

Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip

Of this old Mendicant, and, from her door

Returning with exhilarated heart,

Sits by her tire and builds her hope in heav’n.

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

And while, in that vast solitude to which

The tide of things has led him, he appears

To breathe and live but for himself alone,

Unblam’d, uninjur’d, let him bear about

The good which the benignant law of heaven

Has hung around him, and, while life is his,

Still let him prompt the unletter’d Villagers

To tender offices and pensive thoughts.

Then let him pass, a blessing on his head!

And, long as he can wander, let him breathe

The freshness of the vallies, let his blood

Struggle with frosty air and winter snows,

And let the charter’d wind that sweeps the heath

Beat his grey locks against his wither’d face.

Reverence the hope whose vital anxiousness

Gives the last human interest to his heart.

May never House, misnamed of industry,

Make him a captive; for that pent-up din,

Those life-consuming sounds that clog the air,

Be his the natural silence of old age.

Let him be free of mountain solitudes,

And have around him, whether heard or nor,

The pleasant melody of woodland birds.

Few are his pleasures; if his eyes, which now

Have been so long familiar with the earth,

No more behold the horizontal sun

Rising or setting, let the light at least

Find a free entrance to their languid orbs.

And let him, where and when he will, sit down

Beneath the trees, or by the grassy bank

Of highway side, and with the little birds

Share his chance-gather’d meal, and, finally,

As in the eye of Nature he has liv’d,

So in the eye of Nature let him die.

Table of Contents

There’s George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore,

Three rosy-cheek’d Schoolboys, the highest not more

Than the height of a Counsellor’s bag;

To the top of Great How did it please them to climb,

and there they built up without mortar or lime

A Man on the peak of the crag.

They built him of stones gather’d up as they lay,

They built him and christen’d him all in one day,

An Urchin both vigorous and hale;

And so without scruple they call’d him Ralph Jones.

Now Ralph is renown’d for the length of his bones;

The Magog of Legberthwaite dale.

Just half a week after the Wind sallied forth,

And, in anger or merriment, out of the North

Coming on with a terrible pother,

From the peak of the crag blew the Giant away.

And what did these Schoolboys? — The very next day

They went and they built up another.

— Some little I’ve seen of blind boisterous works

In Paris and London, ‘mong Christians or Turks,

Spirits busy to do and undo:

At remembrance whereof my blood sometimes will flag.

— Then, lighthearted Boys, to the top of the Crag!

And I’ll build up a Giant with you.

Great How is a single and conspicuous hill, which rises towards the foot of Thirl-mere, on the western side of the beautiful dale of Legberthwaite, along the ‘high road between Keswick’ and Ambleside.

Table of Contents

Art thou a Statesman, in the van

Of public business train’d and bred,

— First learn to love one living man;

Then may’st thou think upon the dead.

A Lawyer art thou? — draw not nigh;

Go, carry to some other place

The hardness of thy coward eye,

The falshood of thy sallow face.

Art thou a man of purple cheer?

A rosy man, right plump to see?

Approach; yet Doctor, not too near:

This grave no cushion is for thee.

Art thou a man of gallant pride,

A Soldier, and no mail of chaff?

Welcome! — but lay thy sword aside,

And lean upon a Peasant’s staff.

Physician art thou? One, all eyes,

Philosopher! a fingering slave,

One that would peep and botanize

Upon his mother’s grave?

Wrapp’d closely in thy sensual fleece

O turn aside, and take, I pray,

That he below may rest in peace,

Thy pin-point of a soul away!

— A Moralist perchance appears;

Led, Heaven knows how! to this poor sod:

And He has neither eyes nor ears;

Himself his world, and his own God;

One to whose smooth-rubb’d soul can cling

Nor form nor feeling great nor small,

A reasoning, self-sufficing thing,

An intellectual All in All!

Shut close the door! press down the latch:

Sleep in thy intellectual crust,

Nor lose ten tickings of thy watch,

Near this unprofitable dust.

But who is He with modest looks,

And clad in homely russet brown?

He murmurs near the running brooks

A music sweeter than their own.

He is retired as noontide dew,

Or fountain in a noonday grove;