V.

"Throughout the blissful throng,

Hush'd were harp and song:

Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads Seven,

(The mystic Words of Heaven)

Permissive signal make;

The fervent Spirit bow'd, then spread his wings and spake ! 'Thou in stormy blackness throning

Love and uncreated Light,

By the Earth's unsolaced groaning,
Seize thy terrors, Arm of might!""

And so on for many lines; imprecating, in an impassioned style, the vengeance of God upon the tyrannies and bloodthirsty persecutions of the Great Ones of this Earth. The Vision is ended :

VI.

"The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight,
Cold sweat-drops gather on my limbs ;
My ears throb hot; my eye-balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!"

After this a burst of affectionate enthusiasm for his country prevails over his settled conviction of her guilt and impending punishment :

VII.

"Not yet enslav'd, not wholly vile,
O Albion? O my mother Isle !
Thy valleys, fair as Eden's bowers,
Glitter green with sunny showers;
Thy grassy uplands' gentle swells
Echo to the bleat of flocks;
(Those grassy hills, those glitt'ring dells
Proudly ramparted with rocks)
And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild
Speaks safety to his Island-Child!
Hence, for many a fearless age,

Has social Quiet lov'd thy shore;
Nor ever proud Invader's rage,

Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore."

Then the prophecy of the Destruction that is to ensue; and the Ode concludes with his own feelings and prayers.

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,
And join'd the wild yelling of Famine and Blood!
The nations curse thee, and with eager wond'ring
Shall hear Destruction, like a vulture, scream!
Strange-eyed Destruction! who with many a dream
Of central fires through nether seas up-thund'ring
Soothes her fierce solitude; yet as she lies
By livid fount, or red volcanic stream,
If ever to her lidless dragon-eyes,

O Albion! thy predestin'd ruins rise,
The fiend-hag on her perilous couch doth leap,
Muttering distemper'd triumph in her charmed sleep.

IX.

Away, my soul, away!

In vain, in vain the Birds of warning sing-
And hark! I hear the famish'd brood of prey
Flap their lank pennons on the groaning wind!
Away, my soul, away!

I, unpartaking of the evil thing,

With daily prayer and daily toil
Soliciting for food my scanty soil,

Have wailed my country with a loud Lament.

Now I recenter my immortal mind

In the deep sabbath of meek self-content;
Cleans'd from the vaporous passions that bedim
God's Image, sister of the Seraphim."

The disposition to the mysterious and preternatural, which I remarked above as constituting a very principal moving spring in almost all Mr. Coleridge's writings, is nowhere more absolutely developed, or more splendidly arrayed, than in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." This is one of the best known and most admired of his poems; and certainly, in whatever light it is viewed, in whatever temper it is read, it must be allowed to be a most singular and astonishing work, both in conception and execution. I have quoted largely already, yet I cannot refrain from giving a stanza or two of this wonder of Poetry:

"The moving Moon went up the sky,
And nowhere did abide:
Softly she was going up,

And a star or two beside.

Her beams bemock'd the sultry main,

Like April hoar-frost spread:

But where the ship's huge shadow lay,
The charmed water burnt alway
A still and awful red.

66

Beyond the shadow of the ship

I watch'd the water-snakes:

They moved in tracks of shining white,
And when they reared, the elfish light
Fell off in hoary flakes.

Within the shadow of the ship

I watch'd their rich attire:

Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
They coiled and swam; and every track
Was a flash of golden fire.

O happy living things! no tongue
Their beauty might declare:

A spring of love gushed from my heart,
And I blessed them unaware!

*

Around, around, flew each sweet sound,
Then darted to the Sun:

Slowly the sounds came back again,
Now mixed, now one by one.

Sometimes a-dropping from the sky
I heard the sky-lark sing:

Sometimes all little birds that are,
How they seem'd to fill the sea and air
With their sweet jargoning!

And now 'twas like all instruments,

Now like a lonely flute :

And now it is an angel's song,

That makes the Heavens be mute.

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon,

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,

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

*

But notwithstanding the striking success and perfect originality of his compositions in the manner of the poem quoted above, (for the whole pervading spirit of the "Christabel," that unjustly-vilified fragment, is intensely the same with that of the Ancient Mariner;") and not forgetting either the energy, the dramatic excellence, and splendor of the "Remorse," or the softer and more fanciful elegance of "Zapolya,"-yet it is in his Love Poems that the genius of Coleridge is poured forth in a more peculiar and undivided stream. As a Love Poet he is strictly and exclusively original, or if that be not possible for any one in these latter days, yet indisputably the most genuine and original writer that has existed since the times of "Romeo and

Juliet." It is to his amatory Poetry that I would particularly call the attention of a young or old lover of the Muse; to the one it will seem bright and prospective, to the other gentle and contemplative; and, indeed, this portion of his works has been acknowledged to be excellent, even by those who have affected to despise his other productions. Assuredly no one who had any regard for his own reputation as a critic would forbear praising such Poems as those called "Love" and the "Circassian Love-Chaunt;" but I cannot think that they have been sufficiently admired, nor their essential distinctive principles thoroughly examined. None of the Love Poetry of the present day can, to my mind, be for an instant compared to them in any one particular. The love of Lord Byron is the love,-if we may so degrade that term,—of a Turkish Sultan, revelling in the indiscriminate obedience of a haram of slaves; perilously, indeed, alive to the violent excesses of the passion, but despotic, troubled, desperate, short-lived. The love of Moore (ever excepting what ought to be forgotten) is something more refined and natural; but still it is so bedecked and beplastered with cumbrous Orientalisms, that we are but rarely or never in perfect unison with it. There is positively nothing to be called love in Wordsworth: he has indeed an intellectual devotion, a deep communion of sentiment; but no love, as that word was understood by Shakspeare and Fletcher. But in Coleridge there is a clear unclouded passion, an exquisite respect, a gentleness, a Knightly tenderness and courtesy, which recals us in a moment to our old dramatists; not too sensual, as in Byron, nor too intellectual, as in Wordsworth. The purity of his feelings is unequalled; yet, with seeming contradiction, they are ardent, impatient, and contemplative. It is Petrarch and Shakspeare transfused into each other. It is, if I may be allowed so fanciful an illustration, the Midsummer Moonlight of Love Poetry. Take for example, and mark the complete harmony of expression, flow, and rhyme, with the feelings conveyed in these stanzas:

"I play'd a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story-
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.

She listen'd, with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes and modest grace:
For well she knew I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.

I told her of the Knight who wore
Upon his shield a burning brand;
And that for ten long years he woo'd
The Lady of the Land.

And that she nurs'd him in a cave,
And how his madness went away,
When, on the yellow forest leaves,
A dying man he lay.

His dying words-but when I reach'd
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice and'pausing harp
Disturb'd her soul with pity!

All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrill'd my guileless Genevieve;
The music and the doleful tale,

The rich and balmy eve;

And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued,
Subdued and cherish'd long!

She wept with pity and delight;
She blush'd with love and virgin-shame;
And, like the murmur of a dream,

I heard her breathe my name.

Yet a few words more upon the character of the very extraordinary Author of these Poems, and I have done. Mr. Coleridge has now for many years been what is called before the public, in