SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

1772-1834.

He holds him with his glittering eye,
And listens like a three years' child.1

She steadies with upright keel.

The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.

The sun's rim dips; the stars rush out:
At one stride comes the dark;
With far-heard whisper o'er the sea,
Off shot the spectre-bark.

Ibid.

Part iii.

Ibid.

Ibid.

A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware.

Ibid.

1 Wordsworth, in his Notes to "We are Seven," claims to have written

this line.

2 Coleridge says:

"For these lines I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth."

Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.

499

The Ancient Mariner. Part v.

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.

Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head,

Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.

So lonely 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.

He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.

He prayeth best who loveth best

Ibid.

Part vi.

Part vii.

Ibid.

All things both great and small.

Ibid.

Carv'd with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain.

Ibid.

Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.

A sight to dream of, not to tell!

That saints will aid if men will call;
For the blue sky bends over all!

Ibid.

Ibid.

Conclusion to part i

Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.

Christabel. Part ii.

Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder:
A dreary sea now flows between.

Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Conclusion to Part ii.

For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;

The opening bud to heaven conveyed,

Ibid.

And bade it blossom there. Epitaph on an Infant.

Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.

France. An Ode. v.

Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fring'd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven
Cries out, "Where is it?"

And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.'

Fears in Solitude.

The Devil's Thoughts.

All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,

All are but ministers of Love,

And feed his sacred flame.

Love.

Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement.

A charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?

Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.

This Lime-tree Bower my Prison.

Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.

Ibid.

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.

Dejection. An Ode. Stanza 1.

Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud.
We in ourselves rejoice!

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.

A mother is a mother still,

The holiest thing alive.

Never, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.

Stanza 5.

The Three Graves.

The Visit of the Gods. (Imitated from Schiller.)

Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.

A Christmas Carol. viii.

The knight's bones are dust,

And his good sword rust;

His soul is with the saints, I trust.1

The Knight's Tomb.

It sounds like stories from the land of spirits

If any man obtains that which he merits,

Or

any merit that which he obtains.

Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,

Complaint.

Reproof.

The good great man? Three treasures, - love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
My eyes make pictures when they are shut.
To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!

A Day-Dream.

On taking Leave of

In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.

1817.

Motto to Poems written in Later Life.

1 Misquoted in Scott's "Ivanhoe" (and often repeated thus erroneously).