66

BUT TRUE IT IS, ABOVE ALL LAW AND FATE-(COLERIDGE)

[HARTLEY COLERIDGE, the son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, was born in 1796 at Clevedon, near Bristol. His childhood was remarkable for its precocity, as was his manhood for its irregularity. The early promise of his genius was never fulfilled; hopes, aspirations, dreams, radiant visions, and high ambition-all terminated in a sad and clouded life, a premature old age, and an obscure grave. What he might have done is evident from what little he did do, which, with many faults of execution, everywhere displays the vivida vis of a high and powerful intellect. His "Poems' were republished, in two volumes, in 1851; his miscellaneous prose papers, under the title of " Essays and Marginalia," in 1851; and his "Lives of Northern Worthies" in 1852.]

"A FAIRY THING WITH RED ROUND CHEEKS, THAT ALWAYS FINDS, AND NEVER SEEKS,-(COLERIDGE)

MAKES SUCH A VISION TO THE SIGHT AS FILLS A FATHER'S EYES WITH LIGHT."-HARTLEY COLEridge.

TO SHAKESPEARE.

HE soul of man is larger than the sky,
Deeper than ocean-or the abysmal dark

Like that ark,

Of the unfathomed centre.
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drowned hills, the human family,
And stock reserved of every living kind;

So in the compass of a single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie,
To make all worlds. Great Poet, 'twas thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny,
Or the firm fatal purpose of the heart
Can make of man.

Yet thou wert still the same,

Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.
[From "Poems: by Hartley Coleridge," edit. 1851.]

IS FAITH, ABIDING THE APPOINTED DAY."-H. COLEridge.

"BUT STILL THE HEART DOTH NEED A LANGUAGE, STILL-(Coleridge)

122

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

THE FIRST SOUND.

HAT was't awakened first the untried ear

Of that sole man who was all humankind?
Was it the gladsome welcome of the wind,
Stirring the leaves that never yet were sere?
The four mellifluous streams which flowed so near,
Their lulling murmurs all in one combined?
The note of bird unnamed? Or did the holy ground
Bursting the brake-in wonder, not in fear
Of her new lord? Or did the holy ground
Send forth mysterious melody to greet
The gracious presence of immaculate feet?
Did viewless seraphs rustle all around,
Making sweet music out of air as sweet?
Or his own voice awake him with its sound?
[From "Poems: by Hartley Coleridge," edit. 1851.]

"O SLEEP! IT IS A GENTLE THING, BELOVED FROM POLE TO POLE!"-S. T. COLERIDGE.

“A NOISE LIKE OF A HIDDEN BROOK IN THE LEAFY MONTH OF JUNE."-S. T. COLERIDGE.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the son of the Rev. John Coleridge and
Anne Bowden, was born at the vicarage of Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire,
on the 21st of October 1772. At the age of nine he was sent to school at
Christ's Hospital, London, where he was roughly treated by his masters
and most of his schoolfellows; but made a firm friend in Charles Lamb,
and acquired a prodigious knowledge of the classics, English literature,
even of medicine, and of metaphysics. At sixteen his love of poetry and
his poetical genius budded forth, and he began to give evidence of those
extraordinary conversational powers, that marvellous gift of subtly-flowing
eloquence, which in later life made him the centre of entranced, admiring,
but often puzzled audiences. In 1791 he entered Jesus College, Cambridge,
but gained there no distinction, his heart and his head being ever absorbed
in poetical and philosophical studies.

He remained at the university about two years. He then repaired to
London, where poverty, hunger, and despondency induced him to enlist in

DOTH THE OLD INSTINCT BRING BACK THE OLD NAMES."-COLERidge.

"HE PRAYETH BEST, WHO LOVETH BEST ALL THINGS BOTH GREAT AND SMALL;

AND IN OUR LIFE ALONE does NATURE LIVE."-S. T. coleridge.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

123

the 15th Light Dragoons. After four months' service his friends bought
him off; he returned to Cambridge for a few months; and finally left it in
June 1794. Having made the acquaintance of Southey, the two endeavoured
to realize some wild visions they had formed of an earthly Utopia, but
failing from want of money, fell in love with, and married, two sisters,
Sarah and Edith Fricker; Coleridge marrying the former in October, and
Southey the latter in November.

Coleridge now threw himself heart and soul into the profession of letters, lecturing, essay-writing, and starting a periodical which lived just ten weeks. In 1796 he published a volume of "Juvenile Poems." He varied his occupations by preaching in a Unitarian chapel. In 1797 he settled at the village of Nether Stowey, under the green Quantock hills, where he enjoyed for some time the congenial companionship of Wordsworth. This year witnessed the composition of "The Ancient Mariner," "Kubla Khan," Genevieve," the first part of "Christabel," and others of his best poems. In 1798 appeared "The Lyrical Ballads," after which Coleridge visited Germany, returning to England in November 1799, and translating in three weeks Schiller's tragedy of "Wallenstein." In the following year he visited the English Lakes, and began contributing to the Morning Post. In 1801 he settled at Greta Hall. The next fifteen years were years of despondency, suffering, and unfulfilled promise; the result, partly, of bodily disease, of a fatal habit of laudanum-drinking, and of a natural irresolution which the poet never attempted to conquer. In 1810 he returned to London, publishing in weekly numbers a collection of essays, moral, political, and religious, which he entitled The Friend. In April 1816 he found a home and an asylum in the family of Mr. Gilman, a physician, living at Highgate. who thenceforth regarded it as his proudest title that he was the poet's friend. Here he learned to abandon opium, just in time to save his endangered life and intellect; and here, too, he became a thoughtful and earnest believer in the great truths of Christianity. In 1816 and 1817 he gave to the world his "Two Lay Sermons;" in 1817. Biographia Literaria;" in 1825, the "Aids to Reflection." His life was prolonged, despite his constitutional weakness, for many years; and he died, in full contentment and the firm assurance of future happiness, on the 25th of July 1834.

the "

But

Of Coleridge as a poet it may be said that he possessed “an imagination
richer and more penetrative than that of most poets of his time;" a strange
mastery of the most musical and airy language; an exquisite delicacy and
subtlety of thought; and a keen and ever active religious sentiment.
the infirmity that marred his genius prevented him from bequeathing any
great poems to posterity. His works are unfinished torsos; very beautiful
-some of them surpassingly grand-but none artistically complete. In
thinking of what he has done, our regrets arise that he did so little; that
he whose powers were so great and so varied, made so little use of them
for the delight and edification of the world. Of his two best works, how-
ever, it has been justly remarked that "Time has stamped them as, after
their kind, unsurpassed by any creation of his own generation, or perhaps
of any generation of England's poetry."]

"6 OURS IS HER WEDDING-GARMENT, OURS HER SHROUD."-COLERIDGE.

FOR THE DEAR GOD WHO LOVETH US, HE MADE AND LOVETH ALL."-COLERIDGE.

"A SENSE O'ER ALL MY SOUL IMPREST THAT I AM WEAK, YET NOT UNBLEST,-(COLERIDGE)

66

124

THE BUOYANT CHILD SURVIVING IN THE MAN."-S. T. COLERIDGE.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

SINCE IN ME, ROUND ME, EVERYWHERE, ETERNAL STRENGTH AND WISDOM ARE."-COLERIDGE.

["When thou dartest from the wide-rent cloud."]

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.
ILD splendour of the various-
vested night!

Mother of wildly-working
visions! hail!

I watch thy gliding, while with

watery light

FAITH IS LOVE'S WORLD, HIS HOME, HIS BIRTH-PLACE."-COLERIDGE.

"WORK WITHOUT HOPE DRAWS NECTAR IN A SIEVE,-(COLERIDGE)

And thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud
Behind the gathered blackness lost on high;
And when thou dartest from the wide-rent cloud
Thy placid lightning o'er the awakened sky.
Ah, such is Hope! as changeful and as fair!
Now dimly peering on the wistful sight;
Now hid behind the dragon-winged Despair;
But soon emerging, in her radiant might
She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care
Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight.

[From Coleridge's "Poetical Works."]

"I MAY NOT HOPE FROM OUTWARD FORMS TO WIN, THE PASSION-COLERIDGE)

AND THE LIFE, WHOSE FOUNTAINS ARE WITHIN."-SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

D

CALM ON THE OCEAN.

OWN dropped the breeze, the sails dropped
down,

'Twas sad as sad could be ;

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

All in a hot and copper sky,
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.

AND HOPE WITHOUT AN OBJECT CANNOT LIVE."-S. T. COLERIDGE.