coleridge
The Flight Of Youth
Youth, thou art fled, – but where are all the charms
Which, though with thee they came, and passed with thee,
Should leave a perfume and sweet memory
Of what they have been? All thy boons and harms
Have perished quite. Thy oft-revered alarms
Forsake the fluttering echo. Smiles and tears
Die on my cheek, or, petrified with years,
Show the dull woe which no compassion warms,
The mirth none shares. Yet could a wish, a thought,
Unravel all the complex web of age, –
Could all the characters that Time hath wrought
Be clean effaced from my memorial page
By one short word, the word I would not say; –
I thank my God because my hairs are gray.
– Hartley Coleridge
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Song
She is not fair to outward view
As many maidens be,
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me;
O, then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light!
But now her looks are coy and cold,
To mine they ne’er reply,
And yet I cease not to behold
The love-light in her eye:
Her very frowns are fairer far
Than smiles of other maidens are.
– Hartley Coleridge
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The Solitary Hearted
She was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning,
A smile of hers was like an act of grace;
She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning,
Like daily beauties of the vulgar race:
But if she smiled, a light was on her face,
A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam
Of peaceful radiance, silvering o’er the stream
Of human thought with unabiding glory;
Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream,
A visitation, bright and transitory.
But she is changed,–hath felt the touch of sorrow,
No love hath she, no understanding friend;
O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow
What the poor niggard earth has not to lend;
But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend.
The tallest flower that skyward rears its head
Grows from the common ground, and there must shed
Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely,
That they should find so base a bridal bed,
Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely.
She had a brother, and a tender father,
And she was loved, but not as others are
From whom we ask return of love,–but rather
As one might love a dream; a phantom fair
Of something exquisitely strange and rare,
Which all were glad to look on, men and maids,
Yet no one claim’d–as oft, in dewy glades,
The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness,
Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;–
The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness.
‘Tis vain to say–her worst of grief is only
The common lot, which all the world have known;
To her ’tis more, because her heart is lonely,
And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,–
Once she had playmates, fancies of her own,
And she did love them. They are past away
As Fairies vanish at the break of day;
And like a spectre of an age departed,
Or unsphered Angel wofully astray,
She glides along–the solitary-hearted.
– Hartley Coleridge
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Address To Certain Goldifishes
Restless forms of living light
Quivering on your lucid wings,
Cheating still the curious sight
With a thousand shadowings;
Various as the tints of even,
Gorgeous as the hues of heaven,
Reflected on you native streams
In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams!
Harmless warriors, clad in mail
Of silver breastplate, golden scale; –
Mail of Nature’s own bestowing,
With peaceful radiance, mildly glowing –
Fleet are ye as fleetest galley
Or pirate rover sent from Sallee;
Keener than the Tartar’s arrow,
Sport ye in your sea so narrow.
Was the sun himself your sire?
Were ye born of vital fire?
Or of the shade of golden flowers,
Such as we fetch from Eastern bowers,
To mock this murky clime of ours?
Upwards, downwards, now ye glance,
Weaving many a mazy dance;
Seeming still to grow in size
When ye would elude our eyes –
Pretty creatures! we might deem
Ye were happy as ye seem –
As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe,
As light, as loving, and as lithe,
As gladly earnest in your play,
As when ye gleamed in far Cathay.
And yet, since on this hapless earth
There’s small sincerity in mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art
To drown the outcry of the heart;
It may be that your ceaseless gambols,
Your wheelings, dartings, divings, rambles,
Your restless roving round and round,
The circuit of your crystal bound –
Is but the task of weary pain,
An endless labor, dull and vain;
And while your forms are gaily shining,
Your little lives are inly pining!
Nay – but still I fain would dream
That ye are happy as ye seem.
– Hartley Coleridge
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How Long I Sailed
HOW long I sailed, and never took a thought
To what port I was bound! Secure as sleep,
I dwelt upon the bosom of the deep
And perilous sea. And though my ship was fraught
With rare and precious fancies, jewels brought
From fairyland, no course I cared to keep,
Nor changeful wind nor tide I heeded ought,
But joyed to feel the merry billows leap,
And watch the sunbeams dallying with the waves;
Or haply dream what realms beneath may lie
Where the clear ocean is an emerald sky,
And mermaids warble in their coral caves,
Yet vainly woo to me their secret home; –
And sweet it were for ever so to roam.
– Hartley Coleridge
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19th September – On This Day In History
Born:
1796 Hartley Coleridge (poet)
Died:
2015 Jackie Collins (author)
On This Day:
1879 The Blackpool Illuminations are switched on for the first time
Have a good Monday, 19th September
Water Ballad
Come hither, gently rowing,
Come, bear me quickly o’er
This stream so brightly flowing
To yonder woodland shore.
But vain were my endeavour
To pay thee, courteous guide;
Row on, row on, for ever
I’d have thee by my side.
Good boatman, prithee haste thee,
I seek my father-land. —
Say, when I there have placed thee,
Dare I demand thy hand?
A maiden’s head can never
So hard a point decide;
Row on, row on, for ever
I’d have thee by my side.
The happy bridal over
The wanderer ceased to roam,
For, seated by her lover,
The boat became her home.
And they still sang together
As steering o’er the tide:
Row on through wind and weather
For ever by my side.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Lines Written After A Walk Before Supper
Tho’ much averse, dear Jack, to flicker,
To find a likeness for friend V—-ker,
I’ve made, thro’ earth, and air, and sea,
A voyage of discovery!
And let me add (to ward off strife)
For V—-kers, and for V—-kers’ wife–
She, large and round, beyond belief,
A superfluity of beef!
Her mind and body of a piece,
And both composed of kitchen-grease.
In short, dame Truth might safely dub her
Vulgarity enshrined in blubber!
He, meagre bit of littleness,
All snuff, and musk, and politesse;
So thin, that strip him of his clothing,
He’d totter on the edge of nothing!
In case of foe, he well might hide
Snug in the collops of her side.
Ah then, what simile will suit?
Spindle leg in great jack-boot?
Pismire crawling in a rut,
Or a spigot in a butt?
Thus I humm’d and ha’d awhile,
When Madam Memory, with a smile,
Thus touched my ear–‘Why sure, I ween,
In London streets thou oft hast seen
The very image of this pair:
A little ape, with huge she bear
Linked by hapless chain together:
An unlicked mass the one — the other
An antic huge with nimble crupper’–
But stop, my Muse! for here comes supper.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Domestic Peace
Tell me, on what holy ground
May domestic peace be found?
Halcyon daughter of the skies,
Far on fearful wing she flies,
From the pomp of scepter’d state,
From the rebel’s noisy hate.
In a cottaged vale she dwells
List’ning to the Sabbath bells!
Still around her steps are seen,
Spotless honor’s meeker mien,
Love, the sire of pleasing fears,
Sorrow smiling through her tears,
And conscious of the past employ,
Memory, bosom-spring of joy.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Ode To Tranquility
Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne’er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;
For oh! dear child of thoughtful Truth,
To thee I gave my early youth,
And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore,
Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.
Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On him but seldom, Power divine,
Thy spirit rests! Satiety
And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle hope
And dire remembrance interlope,
To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind:
The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.
But me thy gentle hand will lead
At morning through the accustomed mead;
And in the sultry summer’s heat
Will build me up a mossy seat;
And when the gust of Autumn crowds,
And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,
Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.
The feeling heart, the searching soul,
To thee I dedicate the whole!
And while within myself I trace
The greatness of some future race,
Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
The present works of present man–
A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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