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,- On whom those truths do rest, The thought of our past years in me doth breed For that which is most worthy to be blest- Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, Hence in a season of calm weather Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea Can in a moment travel thither, X 170 Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous song! We in thought will join your throng, 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; Which having been must ever be; In the faith that looks through death, 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 191 140 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, 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 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 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 IT IS A BEAUTEOUS EVENING, It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The gentleness of heaven broods o'er the Sea: Dear Child!1 dear Girl! that walkest with me here, If thou appear untouched by solemn thought, ON THE EXTINCTION OF THE Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee; 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: 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 We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! AFTER-THOUGHT§ I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide, 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. 20 A mighty fountain momently was forced: The shadow of the dome of pleasure A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw : It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, 30 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. To such a deep delight 'twould win me, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! 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, 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 The bride hath paced into the hall, 20 Nodding their heads before her goes 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; "And now the Storm-blast came, and he 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, And now there came both mist and snow, And through the drifts the snowy clifts Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken- 13-21. 30 40 50 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. In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; 4 For all averred, I had killed the bird Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, Then all averred, I had killed the bird '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 Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, All in a hot and copper sky, Glimmered the white moon-shine." And I had done a hellish thing, 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, Day after day, day after day, Water, water, everywhere. The very deep did rot: O Christ! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs About, about, in reel and rout 110 120 130 107-118. 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. 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. |