SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born October | of "Christabel" were written. In 1796 Cole21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, where his father was rector of the parish. He was educated at Christ's Hospital, where Charles Lamb was his schoolmate. In 1791 he entered Cambridge University, but became despondent over a love-affair, left in the second year, and enlisted under an assumed name in the dragoons. One of the officers discovered his prodigious scholarship, inquired into his history, and effected his discharge. Coleridge had read extensively while a boy, had taken a prize for a Greek ode at the university, had attempted English poetry, and dabbled considerably in German metaphysics. Instead of returning to Cambridge, he went to Bristol, where he became intimate with Southey and other enthusiasts who were excited over the French Revolution. They planned a scheme for coming to America and founding a "Pantisocracy on the banks of the Susquehanna, where they should live in perpetual peace; but had to give it up from lack of money. A bookseller of Bristol gave Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems, which after considerable delay was published in 1794, and the next year he married Miss Fricker, whose sister was married to Southey at the same time. He then moved to Nether Stowey, Somersetshire, where Wordsworth was staying; and the two wandered about among the hills in such an apparently aimless fashion that a spy was set to watch them, on the suspicion that they were preparing charts of the coast for the French. Here "The Ancient Mariner" and the first part ridge and Charles Lamb published a small volume of poems together. In 1798 Coleridge went to Göttingen to study, and on returning to England he went to live with Wordsworth and Southey in Cumberland, where the trio acquired the name of "The Lake poets." Coleridge published a fine translation of Schiller's "Wallenstein" and began to contribute political articles to the "Morning Post." In 1804 he went to Malta as secretary to the governor. In 1808 he delivered lectures on poetry and the fine arts at the Royal Institution in London. In 1809 he began to publish "The Friend," which proved unsuccessful. Leaving his wife and children with Southey, he went to London, where he lived first with Mr. Basil Montague and afterward with Mr. Gillman, at Highgate. In the house of the latter he held a weekly conversazione, to which young men having a poetical and philosophical turn came from all parts of the country. He planned many philosophical, theological, and poetical works, but had become an opium-eater, and his splendid dreaming ended in dreams. He had been a Unitarian, but became a believer in the Trinity near the close of his life. He died at Highgate July 25, 1834, leaving behind him the reputation of having largely wasted the brightest intellectual gifts that were bestowed upon any man of his time. Besides his miscellaneous poems, he had published two tragedies, and numerous prose works. A complete edition, in nine volumes, was issued in New York in 1854. SIBYLLINE LEAVES. I. POLITICAL POEMS. ODE TO THE DEPARTING YEAR-1796. I. SPIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of time, Long had I listen'd free from mortal fear, Ere yet the enter'd cloud foreclosed my sight, And with a loud and yet a louder voice Still echoes the dread name that o'er the earth III. I mark'd Ambition in his war array! I heard the mailed monarch's troublous cry"Ah! wherefore does the northern conqueress stay! Groans not her chariot on its onward way?" Stunn'd by death's twice mortal mace, Th' insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye! Ye that gasp'd on Warsaw's plain! Ye that erst at Ismail's tower, When human ruin choked the streams, Fell in conquest's glutted hour, 'Mid women's shrieks and infant's screams! Spirits of the uncoffin'd slain, Sudden blasts of triumph swelling, Oft, at night, in misty train, Rush around her narrow dwelling! The exterminating fiend is fled (Foul her life, and dark her doom)— Mighty armies of the dead Dance like death-fires round her tomb! IV. Departing year! 'twas on no earthly shore Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued, Then, his eye wild ardours glancing, The Spirit of the earth made reverence meet, V. Throughout the blissful tarong, Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven (The mystic words of heaven) Permissive signal make: But chief by Afric's wrongs, Strange, horrible, and foul! To the deaf synod, 'full of gifts and hes" For ever shall the thankless island scowl, Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! VI. The voice had ceased, the vision fled; My ears throb hot; my eyeballs start; The soldier on the war-field spread, Lies pillow'd on a brother's corse!) Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, Echo to the bleat of flocks, Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore VIII. Abandon'd of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride'Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood, The fervent spirit bow'd, then spread his wings And join'd the wild yelling of farine and blood! and spake ! "Thou in stormy blackness throning By the earth's unsolaced groaning, And hunger's bosom to the frost winds bared! The nations curse thee! They with eager wondering Of central fires through nether seas upthundering |