I came among these hills; when like a roe
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams,
Wherever Nature led; more like a man
Flying from something that he dreads, than one
Who sought the thing he loved. For Nature then
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days,
And their glad animal movements all gone by)
To me was all in all. I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest

Unborrow'd from the eye. That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have follow'd, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learn'd
To look on Nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,

Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man :
A motion and a spirit, that impels

All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still

A lover of the meadows, and the woods,

And mountains; and of all that we behold

From this green earth of all the mighty world

Of eye and ear, both what they half create,
And what perceive; well-pleased to recognise
In Nature and the language of the sense,
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse,
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul
Of all my moral being.

LUCY.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,

A maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love.

A violet by a mossy stone

Half hidden from the eye!

Fair as a star, when only one

Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be ;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

The difference to me!

FROM "LAODAMIA."

He spake of love, such love as spirits feel
In worlds whose course is equable and pure;
No fears to beat away-no strife to heal-
The past unsigh'd for, and the future sure;
Spake, as a witness, of a second birth
For all that is most perfect upon earth :

Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams,
An ampler ether, a diviner air,

And fields invested with purpureal gleams;
Climes which the sun, that sheds the brightest day
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey.

SONNET.

The shepherd, looking eastward, softly said,

"Bright is thy veil, O moon, as thou art bright !"

Forthwith, that little cloud, in ether spread,

And penetrated all with tender light,

She cast away, and shew'd her fulgent head
Uncover'd; dazzling the beholder's sight
As if to vindicate her beauty's right,

Her beauty thoughtlessly disparagèd.

Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside,
Went floating from her, dark'ning as it went ;
And a huge mass, to bury or to hide,
Approach'd this glory of the firmament;
Who meekly yields, and is obscured; content
With one calm triumph of a modest pride.

LINES

Written in early Spring.

I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sat reclined,

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran;

And much it grieved my heart to think

What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that sweet bower,

The periwinkle trail'd its wreaths;

And 'tis my faith that every flower

Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopp'd and play'd;

Their thoughts I cannot measure;

But the least motion which they made,

It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;

And I must think, do all I can,

That there was pleasure there.

If I these thoughts may not prevent,

If such be of my creed the plan,

Have I not reason to lament

What man has made of man?

FROM THE "ODE: INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY,

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 for ever 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.

And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves,
Think not of any severing of our lives!

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;

I only have relinquish'd one delight,

To live beneath your more habitual sway.

I love the brooks, which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripp'd lightly as they :
The innocent brightness of a new-born day

Is lovely yet;

The clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
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.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) was the youngest of the thirteen children of the Rev. John Coleridge, Vicar of Ottery St. Mary, in the east of Devonshire, where the poet was born on the 21st of October 1772. His mother, Anne Bowden, was the vicar's second wife. He was an odd, dreamy child, "fretful and inordinately passionate," isolated by his love of reading and by his visions. He entered the grammar school at Ottery, of which his father was the master, in 1778. Soon after

VOL. IV.

D

his father's death S. T. Coleridge was placed at Christ's Hospital at the age of nearly ten. Here he made acquaintance with Lamb. "A poor friendless boy," Coleridge seems to have stayed in London seven years without once revisiting his family. In 1789 the publication of the Sonnets of Bowles awakened him to attempt serious poetic composition. In February 1791 Coleridge left school and went into residence as a sizar at Jesus College, Cambridge. Of his early life at the university not much is known, nor of the causes which led him to run away to London and enlist in the King's Light Dragoons in December 1793. He adopted the appropriate name of Comberback, for he could not ride. For better or worse, however, Coleridge had to continue to be a trooper for nearly four months. He was brought back to Jesus and admonished, but no further notice was taken of the escapade. At Oxford in the ensuing summer he met Southey, who converted him to the romantic scheme of a "pantisocratic" settlement on the banks of the Susquehana, and they wrote together and published at Cambridge a drama, The Fall of Robespierre (1794). Coleridge left Cambridge in December without a degree, and went to stay through the winter near Lamb in London, presently joining Southey at Bristol, where he lectured on politics. In 1795 he married Sara

S. T. Coleridge

After a Pastel taken in Germany

Fricker, and lived first at Clevedon, and then at various other places, feebly endeavouring to earn a living. An interesting volume of Poems marked the season of 1796, and in this year Coleridge published a very dull magazine, The Watchman. He also accepted, in June 1796, the sub-editorship of The Morning Chronicle, but whether he ever took up this post seems to be doubtful. Nervous and

anxious, Coleridge suffered much from neuralgia, which left him "languid even to an inward perishing," and it was at this time that he had recourse to laudanum,