I came among these hills; when like a roe Unborrow'd from the eye. That time is past, Not harsh nor grating, though of ample power All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 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, LUCY. She dwelt among the untrodden ways A maid whom there were none to praise 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 Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there And fields invested with purpureal gleams; 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 Her beauty thoughtlessly disparagèd. Meanwhile that veil, removed or thrown aside, LINES Written in early Spring. I heard a thousand blended notes, In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts 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, 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! 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 What though the radiance which was once so bright Though nothing can bring back the hour Which having been, must ever be : In the faith that looks through death, And O ye fountains, meadows, hills, and groves, 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, Is lovely yet; The clouds that gather round the setting sun Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 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, |