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VIII

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie Thy Soul's immensity;

Thou best Philosopher, who yet dost keep Thy heritage, thou Eye among the blind,

110

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind,-
Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest,
Which we are toiling all our lives to find,
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave;
Thou, over whom thy Immortality
Broods like the Day, a Master o'er a Slave, 120
A Presence which is not to be put by;
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The years to bring the inevitable yoke,
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife?
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight,
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life!

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The thought of our past years in me doth breed
Perpetual benediction; not indeed

For that which is most worthy to be blest-
Delight and liberty, the simple creed

Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest,

Hence in a season of calm weather
Though inland far we be,

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea
Which brought us hither,

Can in a moment travel thither,
And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.
And see the Children sport upon the shore,

X

170

Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song!
And let the young Lambs bound
As to the tabor's sound!

We in thought will join your throng,
Ye that pipe and ye that play,
Ye that through your hearts to-day
Feel the gladness of the May!

What though the radiance which was once so bright

Be now forever taken from my sight,

Though nothing can bring back the hour Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; We will grieve not, rather find

Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy

Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;

In the faith that looks through death,
In years that bring the philosophic mind.

XI

And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,

Forebode not any severing of our loves!

With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

breast:

Not for these I raise

180

I only have relinquished one delight

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The song of thanks and praise;

But for those obstinate questionings

To live beneath your more habitual sway. I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,

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Even more than when I tripped lightly as they; The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;

Do take a sober colouring from an eye
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are

won.

Thanks to the human heart by which we live, Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER
BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1802

Earth has not anything to show more fair: 160 Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty:

200

This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields, and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.
Never did sun more beautifully steep
In his first splendour, valley, rock, or hill;
Ne'er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!
The river glideth at his own sweet will:
Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;
And all that mighty heart is lying still!

IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING,
CALM AND FREE

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free,
The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;

The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder-everlastingly.

Dear Child!1 dear Girl! that walkest with me here,

If thou appear untouched by solemn thought,
Thy nature is not therefore less divine:
Thou liest in Abraham's bosom2 all the year;
And worship 'st at the Temple's inner shrine,
God being with thee when we know it not.

ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE
VENETIAN REPUBLIC*

Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee;
And was the safeguard of the west: the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden City, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And when she took unto herself a Mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea.†
And what if she had seen those glories fade,
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay;
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid
When her long life hath reached its final day:
Men are we, and must grieve when even the

Shade

Of that which once was great, is passed away.

1 Wordsworth's sister, Dorothy. 2 See Luke xvi, 22.

* Venice threw off the yoke of the Eastern Empire as early as 809 and remained a republic or an oligarchy until conquered by Napoleon in 1797. At one time she had extensive possessions and colonies in the Levant.

†The ancient Doges annually, on Ascension Day.

threw a ring into the Adriatic in formal

LONDON, 1802‡

Milton! thou should 'st be living at this hour:
England hath need of thee; she is a fen
Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen,
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower,
Have forfeited their ancient English dower
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men;
Oh! raise us up, return to us again;
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power.
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart:
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the

sea:

Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.-Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathéd horn.

AFTER-THOUGHT§

I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.-Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon, as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide;
Still glides the Stream, and shall forever glide;
The Form remains, the Function never dies;
While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,
We Men, who in our morn of youth defied
The elements, must vanish;-be it so!
Enough, if something from our hands have

power

To live, and act, and serve the future hour; And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower,

We feel that we are greater than we know.

Written in despondency over the inert attitude of England toward the hopes and ideals of the revolutionists and the opponents of Napoleon.

token of this espousal, or of perpetual do- 8 The conclusion of a series of sonnets to the minion.

river Duddon.

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A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer

In a vision once I saw :

It was an Abyssinian maid,

And on her dulcimer she played,

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40

Coleridge says this poem was composed when he had fallen asleep just after reading from Marco Polo in Purchas's Pilgrimage how "In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately palace," etc. There were more lines which he failed to record. Charles Lamb spoke of the poem as "a vision which he [Coleridge] repeats so enchantingly that it irradiates and brings heaven and elysian bowers into my parlour when he sings or says it."

1 A region in Tartary. 2 Kubla the Cham, or Emperor.

Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,

To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,

I would build that dome in air,

That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

50

THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER†

IN SEVEN PARTS

ARGUMENT

How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by Storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the Tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country.

PART I.

It is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
"By thy long gray beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

1-12. An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.

From the publication, in 1798, of the Lyrical Ballads, the joint production of Coleridge and Wordsworth, may be dated very definitely the recognition of the new spirit in English literature which is commonly spoken of as the Romantic Revival. See Eng. Lit., pp. 232-235. Coleridge, in the fourteenth chapter of his Biographia Literaria, writes of the occasion of the Lyrical Ballads as follows: "During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of the imagination. The sudden charm, which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might be composed of two sorts. the one, the incidents and agents were to be. in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations. supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time believed

In

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The bride hath paced into the hall,
Red as a rose is she;

20 Nodding their heads before her goes
The merry minstrelsy.

the

himself under supernatural agency. For second class, subjects were to be chosen from to be such as will be found in every village and ordinary life; the characters and incidents were its vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after them, or to notice them when they present themselves.

"In this idea originated the plan of the Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human

interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to

Yet he cannot choose but hear;
The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast,
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.

"And now the Storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong:

procure for these shadows of imagination that He struck with his o'ertaking wings, willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, And chased us south along. which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet see not, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel And southward aye we fled.

nor understand. With this view I wrote The Ancient Mariner."

The poem is here given in the revised text of 1829.

As first printed in the Lyrical Ballads, the diction and spelling were considerably more archaic, as the Argument, which was not retained in the later edition, shows. Wordsworth gives the following information: "Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention, but certain parts I suggested; for example, some crime was to be committed which should bring upon the Old Navigator, as Coleridge afterward delighted to call him, the spectral persecution, as a consequence of that crime and his own wanderings. I had been reading in ShelVocke's Voyages a day or two before, that. while doubling Cape Horn, they frequently saw albatrosses in that latitude, the largest sort of sea-fowl, some extending their wings twelve or thirteen feet. 'Suppose,' said I, you represent him as having killed one of these birds on entering the South Sea, and that the tutelary spirits of these regions take upon them to avenge the crime.' The incident was thought fit for the purpose and adopted accordingly." Wordsworth also furnished several lines of the poem, especially 15-16, 226-227.

1 at once

With sloping masts and dipping prow,
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,

And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.

And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-
The ice was all between.

13-21.

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The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old seafaring man, and constrained to hear his tale. 21-30. The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the line.

31-40. The Wedding Guest heareth the bridal music: but the Mariner continueth his tale. 41-50. The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.

51-62. The land of ice, and of fearful sounds, where no living thing was to be seen.

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In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,

It perched for vespers nine; 4

For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!

Nor dim nor red, like God's own head,
The glorious Sun uprist:5

Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.

'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist.

The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,

70 The furrow followed free;

We were the first that ever burst

Into that silent sea.

100

Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be;

And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea!

Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, All in a hot and copper sky,

Glimmered the white moon-shine."

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And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:

63-70. Till a great sea bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

71-78. And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.

79-82. The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.

83-96. His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck. 97-102. But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.

103-106. The fair breeze continues: the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.

2 swoon. dream

The bloody Sun, at noon,

Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

Water, water, everywhere.
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!

Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue and white.
And some in dreams assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

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120

130

107-118. 119-130. avenged. 131-138. A Spirit had followed them; one of the invisible inhabitants of this planet, neither departed souls nor angels; concerning whom the learned Jew, Josephus, and the Platonic Constantinopolitan, Michael Psellus, may be consulted.

The ship hath been suddenly becalmed.
And the Albatross begins to be

3 "The marineres gave it biscuit-worms" (1798 ed.) They are very numerous, and there is no climate 4 nine evenings

or element without one or more.

5 Properly a present tense; cp. p. 61, note 16.

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