Alas! where'er the current tends,
Regret pursues and with it blends,—
Huge Criffel's hoary top ascends
By Skiddaw seen,—

Neighbors we were, and loving friends
We might have been:

True friends though diversely inclined; But heart with heart, and mind with mind, Where the main fibres are entwined,

Through Nature's skill,

May even by contraries be joined
More closely still.

The tear will start, and let it flow;
Thou "poor inhabitant below,"
At this dread moment-even so-
Might we together

Have sate and talked where gowans blow,
Or on wild heather.

What treasures would have then been placed
Within my reach; of knowledge graced
By fancy what a rich repast!

But why go on?

Oh! spare to sweep, thou mournful blast,
His grave grass-grown.

There, too, a son, his joy and pride

(Not three weeks past the stripling died),

Lies gathered to his father's side,

Soul-moving sight!

Yet one to which is not denied
Some sad delight.

For he is safe, a quiet bed

Hath early found among the dead,
Harbored where none can be misled,

Wronged, or distrest;

And surely here it may be said

That such are blest.

And oh for Thee, by pitying grace
Checked ofttimes in a devious race,
May He, who halloweth the place
Where Man is laid,

Receive thy Spirit in the embrace
For which it prayed !

Sighing, I turned away; but ere
Night fell, I heard, or seemed to hear,
Music that sorrow comes not near,

A ritual hymn,

Chanted in love that casts out fear
By Seraphim.

THE SOLITARY REAPER.

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts, and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
Oh, listen! for the vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No nightingale did ever chant

So sweetly to reposing bands Of travelers in some shady haunt, Among Arabian sands:

A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In springtime from the cuckoo bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:

Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again!

Whate'er the theme, the maiden sang

As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;-
I listened till I had my fill,
And when I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore

Long after it was heard no more.

COMPOSED UPON WESTMINSTER BRIDGE, SEPTEMBER 3, 1803.
Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty :
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 splendor 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!

WRITTEN IN LONDON, SEPTEMBER, 1802.

O Friend! I know not which way I must look
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest,

To think that now our life is only drest
For show; mean handiwork of craftsman, cook,
Or groom! We must run glittering like a brook
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest :
The wealthiest man among us is the best :
No grandeur now in nature or in book
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense,
This is idolatry; and these we adore:
Plain living and high thinking are no more:
The homely beauty of the good old cause
Is gone; our peace, our fearful innocence,
And pure religion breathing household laws.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.-1772-1834.

Wordsworth lived out his long, blameless, and devoted life under conditions singularly favorable to the full development of his genius. Freed from the pressure of money difficulties, and enabled to live simply amid the loveliest of natural surroundings, happy in his home and in his friends, and blessed with health and energy, he has left us a shining example of a serene and truly successful life. The story of Coleridge, Wordsworth's friend and fellow poet, is tragically different. It is the story of a man of rare and varied gifts, who, from whatever cause, could not, or did not, put forth his powers to the full. Hazlitt has condensed this into one epigrammatic sentence: "To the man had been given in high measure the seeds of noble endowment, but to unfold them had been forbidden him.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the youngest of a large family, was the son of the vicar and schoolmaster at the little town of Ottery St. Mary, Devonshire. Left an orphan at his ninth year, he was admitted to the Charity School at Christ's Hospital, London, and began the unequal fight of life. Here he met Charles Lamb, who has recorded some of their joint experiences in one of his Essays of Elia.* From the first, Coleridge seems to have half lived in a dream-world, created by "the shaping spirit of imagination," which, as he says, "nature gave me at my birth." As a little child he wandered over the Devonshire fields, slashing the tops off weeds and nettles in the character of one of the "Seven Champions of Christendom"; and in school at London he would lie for hours on the roof, gazing after the drifting clouds while his schoolfellows played football in the court

* "Recollections of Christ's Church Hospital."

+ Coleridge's "Dejection; an Ode.”

below, or, in the midst of the crowded Strand, he would fancy himself Leander swimming the Hellespont. A hopelessly erratic, inconsequent element runs through his whole life, depriving it of unity and steady purpose. At nineteen he went to Cambridge and furnished his rooms with no thought of his inability to pay the uphol sterers; then, under the pressure of a comparatively trifling debt, he gave up all his prospects, fled to London, and enlisted in the Dragoons. He returned again to Cambridge, but left in 1794 without taking a degree. Visiting Oxford in this year, he met the youthful Southey, in whom he found a kindred spirit. Both were feeling that impulse from the French Revolution which was agitating Europe. They agreed that human society. should be reconstructed, and decided to begin the reform by establishing an ideal community in the wilds of America. The new form of government was to be called a Pantisocracy, or the government by all, and the citizens were to combine farming and literature. The bent of the two poets at this time is shown by the subjects of their work. They composed together a poem on The Fall of Robespierre, and Southey's Wat Tyler (1794) is charged with the revolutionary spirit. In 1795 Coleridge married Sarah Fricker, whose sister Edith became the wife of Southey a few weeks later. The pantisocratic scheme was given up for lack of funds, and Coleridge and his wife settled at Clevedon, on the Bristol Channel. It was about two years after this that he met Wordsworth at Alfoxden, contributing The Ancient Mariner to their joint venture, the Lyrical Ballads. In 1798 Coleridge left for Germany, where he remained about two years, receiving a fresh and powerful stimulus from the new intellectual and literary life on which that nation had just entered. An immediate result of this visit was a translation of Schiller's Wallenstein, but its effect on