Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite; a feeling and a love,

That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, nor any interest
Unborrow'd from the eye. - That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have follow'd; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learn'd
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still
A lover of the meadows and the woods

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth; of all the mighty world
Of eye, and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive; well pleased to recognise
In nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

Nor perchance,

If I were not thus taught, should I the more
Suffer my genial spirits to decay :

For thou art with me here upon the banks
Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend,
My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch
The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures in the shooting lights
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while
May I behold in thee what I was once,

My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make,
Knowing that Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 't is her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy; for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk;

And let the misty mountain-winds be free
To blow against thee: and, in after years,
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms,
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place

For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then,
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief,

Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts

Of tender joy wilt thou remember me,

And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance

If I should be where I no more can hear

Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams
Of past existence - wilt thou then forget

That on the banks of this delightful stream
We stood together; and that I, so long
A worshipper of Nature, hither came
Unwearied in that service: rather say
With warmer love-oh! with far deeper zeal
Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget
That after many wanderings, many years
Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs,
And this green pastoral landscape, were to me
More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

V

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE

S'

(1772-1834)

EVERAL of the great English poets have been more or less insane, according to the standards of commonplace human mortals. Blake, in his later years, faded away in a mystical cloud. Rossetti was addicted to the use of chloral for insomnia, till his mind was in a measure like a vessel loosened from its moorings. Poe felt and acknowledged the moments of insanity in which he did and wrote things to himself unaccountable. And Coleridge belongs to the same class, but his golden mind succeeded in catching the witching loveliness of terrifying dreams, and singing with ethereal melody the strange and supernatural, as if they really were a part of our common existence.

Coleridge produced less than half-a-dozen poems of the first excellence, and all of these early in life. He wandered into metaphysical speculations, and for years he lived under the exciting and deadening influence of opium. There is a tradition of his occasional brilliancy of conversation; but in spite of many plans and the encouragement of friends, he accomplished nothing. Some one has remarked that Coleridge's

good work could be compressed into twenty pages, but that should be bound in pure gold. We are tempted to regret that so brilliant a mind should so have wasted its efforts and failed in its purposes. But as those moments of strange terror and revelation come to us but seldom, if ever, and frequent visitations would shatter our sanity, it seems fairer to believe that Coleridge put into his twenty pages the mental power of a lifetime. Certainly we need no more to place him forever in the company of the greatest poets. Speaking of "Christabel" and "The Ancient Mariner," an American poet says:

"They act upon the mind with a weird-like influence, searching out the most obscure recesses of the soul and making mysterious emotions in the very centre of our being, and then sending them to glide along every nerve and vein with the effect of enchantment. It is as if we were possessed with a subtle insanity or had stolen a glance into the occult secrets of the universe. All our customary impressions of things are shaken by the intrusion of an indefinite sense of fear and amazement into the soul. . . . He could stir that supernatural fear in the heart which he has so powerfully expressed in one stanza of the Ancient Mariner a fear from which no person, poet or prosaist, has ever been entirely free, and which makes the blood of the pleasantest atheist at times turn cold and his philosophy slide away under his feet."

But there was in "The Ancient Mariner something more than terror. Says Swinburne: "The tenderness of sentiment which touches with significant color the pure white imagination is here soft and piteous enough, but womanly rather than effeminate." "I conceive the leading point about

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

IT is an ancient Mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

66

By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

"The Bridegroom's doors are open'd wide,
And I am next of kin;

The guests are met, the feast is set :
May'st hear the merry din."

He holds him with his skinny hand
"There was a ship," quoth he.

-

"Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon !"
Eftsoons his hand dropt he.

He holds him with his glittering eye -
The Wedding-Guest stood still,
And listens like a three years' child :
The Mariner hath his will.

The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone:
He cannot chuse but hear;

And thus spake on that ancient man,

The bright-eyed Mariner.

"The ship was cheer'd, the harbour clear'd,

Merrily did we drop

Below the kirk, below the hill,

Below the lighthouse top.

"The Sun came up upon the left,

Out of the sea came he!

And he shone bright, and on the right

Went down into the sea.