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

Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.

Nor deem my zeal or fractious or mistimed;

For never can true courage dwell with them

Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look

At their own vices. We have been too long

Dupes of a deep delusion! Some, belike,

Groaning with restless enmity, expect

All change from change of constituted power;

As if a Government had been a robe

On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged

Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe

Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach

A radical causation to a few

Poor drudges of chastising Providence,

Who borrow all their hues and qualities

From our own folly and rank wickedness,

Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,

Dote with a mad idolatry; and all

Who will not fall before their images,

And yield them worship, they are enemies

Even of their country!

Such have I been deemed. -

But, O dear Britain! O my Mother Isle!

Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy

To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,

A husband, and a father! who revere

All bonds of natural love, and find them all

Within the limits ot thy rocky shores.

O native Britain! O my Mother Isle!

How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy

To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,

Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,

Have drunk in all my intellectual life,

All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,

All adoration of the God in nature,

All lovely and all honourable things,

Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel

The joy and greatness of its future being?

There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul

Unborrowed from my country! O divine

And beauteous Island! thou hast been my sole

And most magnificent temple, in the which

I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,

Loving the God that made me! -

May my fears,

My filial fears, be vain! and may the vaunts

And menace of the vengeful enemy

Pass like the gust, that roared and died away

In the distant tree: which heard, and only heard

In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.

But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad

The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze:

The light has left the summit of the hill,

Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,

Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,

Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot!

On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,

Homeward I wind my way; and lo! recalled

From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,

I find myself upon the brow, and pause

Startled! And after lonely sojourning

In such a quiet and surrounded nook,

This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,

Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty

Of that huge amphitheatre of rich

And elmy fields, seems like society -

Conversing with the mind, and giving it

A livelier impulse and a dance of thought!

And now, beloved Stowey! I behold

Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms

Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend;

And close behind them, hidden from my view,

Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe

And my babe’s mother dwell in peace! With light

And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,

Remembering thee, O green and silent dell!

And grateful, that by nature’s quietness

And solitary musings, all my heart

Is softened, and made worthy to indulge

Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.

Table of Contents

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day

Distinguishes the West, no long thin slip

Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues.

Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge!

You see the glimmer of the stream beneath,

But hear no murmuring : it flows silently,

O’er its soft bed of verdure. All is still,

A balmy night! and though the stars be dim,

Yet let us think upon the vernal showers

That gladden the green earth, and we shall find

A pleasure in the dimness of the stars.

And hark! the Nightingale begins its song,

‘Most musical, most melancholy’ bird!

A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought!

In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced

With the remembrance of a grievous wrong,

Or slow distemper, or neglected love,

(And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale

Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he,

First named these notes a melancholy strain.

And many a poet echoes the conceit;

Poet who hath been building up the rhyme

When he had better far have stretched his limbs

Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moonlight, to the influxes

Of shapes and sounds and shifting elements

Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song

And of his fame forgetful! so his fame

Should share in Nature’s immortality,

A venerable thing! and so his song

Should make all Nature lovelier, and itself

Be loved like Nature! But ‘twill not be so;

And youths and maidens most poetical,

Who lose the deepening twilights of the spring

In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still

Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs

O’er Philomela’s pity-pleading strains.

My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt

A different lore : we may not thus profane

Nature’s sweet voices, always full of love

And joyance! ‘Tis the merry Nightingale

That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates

With fast thick warble his delicious notes,

As he were fearful that an April night

Would be too short for him to utter forth

His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul

Of all its music!

And I know a grove

Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

Which the great lord inhabits not; and so

This grove is wild with tangling underwood,

And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,

Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.

But never elsewhere in one place I knew

So many nightingales; and far and near,

In wood and thicket, over the wide grove,

They answer and provoke each other’s song,

With skirmish and capricious passagings,

And murmurs musical and swift jug jug,

And one low piping sound more sweet than all —

Stirring the air with such a harmony,

That should you close your eyes, you might almost

Forget it was not day! On moonlight bushes,

Whose dewy leaflets are but half disclosed,

You may perchance behold them on the twigs,

Their bright, bright eyes, their eyes both bright and full,

Glistening, while many a glowworm in the shade

Lights up her love-torch.

A most gentle Maid,

Who dwelleth in her hospitable home

Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

(Even like a Lady vowed and dedicate

To something more than Nature in the grove)

Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,

That gentle Maid! and oft a moment’s space,

What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,

Hath heard a pause of silence; till the moon

Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky

With one sensation, and those wakeful birds

Have all burst forth in choral minstrelsy,

As if some sudden gale had swept at once

A hundred airy harps! And she hath watched

Many a nightingale perch giddily

On blossomy twig still swinging from the breeze,

And to that motion tune his wanton song