Ah, yet
consider
it again!
Warner - World's Best Literature - v06 to v10 - Cal to Fro
Adultery it is not fit
Or safe (for woman) to commit.
Thou shalt not steal: an empty feat,
When 'tis as lucrative to cheat.
Bear not false witness: let the lie
Have time on its own wings to fly.
Thou shalt not covet; but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.
THO
TO THE UNKNOWN GOD
O
THOU whose image in the shrine
Of human spirits dwells divine;
Which from that precinct once conveyed,
To be to outer day displayed,
Doth vanish, part, and leave behind
Mere blank and void of empty mind,
Which willful fancy seeks in vain
With casual shapes to fill again!
O Thou that in our bosom's shrine
Dost dwell, unknown because divine!
I thought to speak, I thought to say,
"The light is here,”- "Behold the way,".
"The voice was thus," and "Thus the word,".
And "Thus I saw," and "That I heard,”.
But from the lips that half assayed
The imperfect utterance fell unmade.
-
-
-
## p. 3831 (#193) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3831
O Thou, in that mysterious shrine
Enthroned, as I must say, divine!
I will not frame one thought of what
Thou mayest either be or not.
I will not prate of "thus" and "so,"
And be profane with "yes" and "no";
Enough that in our soul and heart
Thou, whatsoe'er Thou may'st be, art.
Unseen, secure in that high shrine
Acknowledged present and divine,
I will not ask some upper air,
Some future day to place Thee there;
Nor say, nor yet deny, such men
And women say Thee thus and then:
Thy name was such, and there or here
To him or her Thou didst appear.
Do only Thou in that dim shrine,
Unknown or known, remain, divine;
There, or if not, at least in eyes
That scan the fact that round them lies,
The hand to sway, the judgment guide,
In sight and sense Thyself divide:
Be Thou but there, in soul and heart,-
I will not ask to feel Thou art.
EASTER DAY
NAPLES, 1849
THE
HROUGH the great sinful streets of Naples as I past,
With fiercer heat than flamed above my head,
My heart was hot within me; till at last
My brain was lightened when my tongue had said.
Christ is not risen!
Christ is not risen, no-
He lies and molders low;
Christ is not risen!
What though the stone were rolled away, and though
The grave found empty there? —
If not there, then elsewhere;
If not where Joseph laid him first, why then
Where other men
## p. 3832 (#194) ###########################################
3832
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Translaid him after, in some humbler clay.
Long ere to-day
Corruption that sad perfect work hath done,
Which here she scarcely, lightly, had begun:
The foul engendered worm
Feeds on the flesh of the life-giving form
Of our most Holy and Anointed One.
He is not risen, no-
He lies and molders low;
Christ is not risen!
What if the women, ere the dawn was gray,
Saw one or more great angels, as they say
(Angels, or Him himself)? Yet neither there, nor then,
Nor afterwards, nor elsewhere, nor at all,
Hath he appeared to Peter or the Ten;
Nor, save in thunderous terror, to blind Saul;
Save in an after-Gospel and late Creed,
He is not risen, indeed,-
Christ is not risen!
Or what if e'en, as runs a tale, the Ten
Saw, heard, and touched, again and yet again?
What if at Emmaüs's inn, and by Capernaum's Lake,
Came One, the bread that brake-
Came One that spake as never mortal spake,
And with them ate, and drank, and stood, and walked about?
Ah! "some" did well to "doubt"!
Ah! the true Christ, while these things came to pass,
Nor heard, nor spake, nor walked, nor lived, alas!
He was not risen, no-
He lay and moldered low;
Christ was not risen!
As circulates in some great city crowd
A rumor changeful, vague, importunate, and loud,
From no determined centre, or of fact
Or authorship exact,
Which no man can deny
Nor verify;
So spread the wondrous fame;
He all the same
Lay senseless, moldering low;
He was not risen, no-
Christ was not risen!
## p. 3833 (#195) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3833
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
As of the unjust, also of the just-
Yea, of that Just One, too!
This is the one sad Gospel that is true-
Christ is not risen!
Is he not risen, and shall we not rise?
Oh, we unwise!
What did we dream, what wake we to discover?
Ye hills, fall on us, and ye mountains, cover!
In darkness and great gloom
Come ere we thought it is our day of doom;
From the cursed world, which is one tomb,
Christ is not risen!
Eat, drink, and play, and think that this is bliss:
There is no heaven but this;
There is no hell,
Save earth, which serves the purpose doubly well,
Seeing it visits still
With equalest apportionment of ill
Both good and bad alike, and brings to one same dust
The unjust and the just
With Christ, who is not risen.
Eat, drink, and die, for we are souls bereaved:
Of all the creatures under heaven's wide cope
We are most hopeless, who had once most hope,
And most beliefless, that had most believed.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
As of the unjust, also of the just-
Yea, of that Just One, too!
It is the one sad Gospel that is true---
Christ is not risen!
Weep not beside the tomb,
Ye women, unto whom
He was great solace while ye tended him;
Ye who with napkin o'er the head
And folds of linen round each wounded limb
Laid out the Sacred Dead;
And thou that bar'st him in thy wondering womb;
Yea, Daughters of Jerusalem, depart,
Bind up as best you may your own sad bleeding heart:
## p. 3834 (#196) ###########################################
3834
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
Go to your homes, your living children tend,
Your earthly spouses love;
Set your affections not on things above,
Which moth and rust corrupt, which quickliest come to end:
Or pray, if pray ye must, and pray, if pray ye can,
For death; since dead is he whom ye deemed more than man,
Who is not risen: no-
But lies and molders low-
Who is not risen!
――
Ye men of Galilee!
Why stand ye looking up to heaven, where him ye ne'er may see,
Neither ascending hence, nor returning hither again?
Ye ignorant and idle fishermen!
Hence to your huts, and boats, and inland native shore,
And catch not men, but fish;
Whate'er things ye might wish,
Him neither here nor there ye e'er shall meet with more.
Ye poor deluded youths, go home,
Mend the old nets ye left to roam,
Tie the split oar, patch the torn sail:
It was indeed an "idle tale».
He was not risen!
And oh, good men of ages yet to be,
Who shall believe because ye did not see
Oh, be ye warned, be wise!
No more with pleading eyes,
And sobs of strong desire,
――――――
Unto the empty vacant void aspire,
Seeking another and impossible birth
That is not of your own, and only mother earth.
But if there is no other life for you,
Sit down and be content, since this must even do;
He is not risen!
One look and then depart,
Ye humble and ye holy men of heart;
And ye ye ministers and stewards of a Word
Which ye would preach, because another heard
Ye worshipers of that ye do not know,
Take these things hence and go:-
He is not risen!
## p. 3835 (#197) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3835
Here, on our Easter Day
We rise, we come, and lo! we find Him not,
Gardener nor other, on the sacred spot:
Where they have laid Him there is none to say;
No sound, nor in, nor out-no word
Of where to seek the dead or meet the living Lord.
There is no glistering of an angel's wings,
There is no voice of heavenly clear behest:
Let us go hence, and think upon these things
In silence, which is best.
Is He not risen? No-
But lies and molders low?
Christ is not risen?
IT FORTIFIES MY SOUL TO KNOW
T FORTIFIES my soul to know
IT
That though I perish, Truth is so;
That howsoe'er I stray and range,
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change;
I steadier step when I recall
That if I slip, Thou dost not fall!
SAY NOT, THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH
SAY
AY not, the struggle naught availeth,
The labor and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been, they remain.
If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke concealed,
Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers,
And but for you, possess the field.
For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in, the main.
And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright.
## p. 3836 (#198) ###########################################
3836
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
COME BACK
C
OME back, come back! behold with straining mast
And swelling sail, behold her steaming fast:
With one new sun to see her voyage o'er,
With morning light to touch her native shore.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! while westward laboring by,
With sailless yards, a bare black hulk we fly.
See how the gale we fight with sweeps her back
To our lost home, on our forsaken track.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! across the flying foam
We hear faint far-off voices call us home:
Come back! ye seem to say; ye seek in vain;
We went, we sought, and homeward turned again.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! and whither back, or why?
To fan quenched hopes, forsaken schemes to try;
Walk the old fields; pace the familiar street;
Dream with the idlers, with the bards compete.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! and whither and for what?
To finger idly some old Gordian knot,
Unskilled to sunder, and too weak to cleave,
And with much toil attain to half-believe.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! yea, back indeed do go
Sighs panting thick, and tears that want to flow;
Fond fluttering hopes upraise their useless wings,
And wishes idly struggle in the strings.
Come back, come back!
Come back, come back! more eager than the breeze
The flying fancies sweep across the seas,
And lighter far than ocean's flying foam
The heart's fond message hurries to its home.
Come back, come back!
## p. 3837 (#199) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3837
Come back, come back!
Back flies the foam; the hoisted flag streams back;
The long smoke wavers on the homeward track;
Back fly with winds things which the wind obey:
The strong ship follows its appointed way.
AS SHIPS BECALMED
S SHIPS becalmed at eve, that lay
With canvas drooping, side by side,
Two towers of sail, at dawn of day,
Are scarce long leagues apart descried.
A$
When fell the night, up sprang the breeze,
And all the darkling hours they plied;
Nor dreamt but each the self-same seas
By each was clearing, side by side:
E'en so- but why the tale reveal
Of those whom, year by year unchanged,
Brief absence joined anew, to feel,
Astounded, soul from soul estranged?
At dead of night their sails were filled,
And onward each rejoicing steered;
Ah! neither blame, for neither willed
Or wist what first with dawn appeared.
To veer, how vain! On, onward strain,
Brave barks! -in light, in darkness too!
Through winds and tides one compass guides
To that and your own selves be true.
But O blithe breeze! and O great seas!
Though ne'er that earliest parting past,
On your wide plain they join again,
Together lead them home at last.
One port, methought, alike they sought,-
One purpose hold, where'er they fare;
O bounding breeze, O rushing seas,
At last, at last, unite them there.
## p. 3838 (#200) ###########################################
3838
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
THE UNKNOWN COURSE
W
HERE lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know;
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face,
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to pace!
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below
The foaming wake far widening as we go.
On stormy nights, when wild Northwesters rave,
How proud a thing to fight with wind and wave!
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast
Exults to bear, and scorns to wish it past.
Where lies the land to which the ship would go?
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know.
And where the land she travels from? Away,
Far, far behind, is all that they can say.
THE GONDOLA
A
FLOAT; we move-delicious! Ah,
What else is like the gondola ?
This level flow of liquid glass
Begins beneath us swift to pass.
It goes as though it went alone
By some impulsion of its own.
(How light it moves, how softly! Ah,
Were all things like the gondola! )
How light it moves, how softly! Ah,
Could life, as does our gondola,
Unvexed with quarrels, aims, and cares,
And moral duties and affairs,
Unswaying, noiseless, swift, and strong,
For ever thus- thus glide along!
(How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola! )
With no more motion than should bear
A freshness to the languid air;
## p. 3839 (#201) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3839
With no more effort than expressed
The need and naturalness of rest,
Which we beneath a grateful shade
Should take on peaceful pillows laid!
(How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola ! )
In one unbroken passage borne
To closing night from opening morn,
Uplift at whiles slow eyes to mark
Some palace-front, some passing bark;
Through windows catch the varying shore,
And hear the soft turns of the oar!
(How light we move, how softly! Ah,
Were life but as the gondola! )
THE POET'S PLACE IN LIFE
OME, Poet, come!
COME,
A thousand laborers ply their task
And what it tends to, scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not what to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments portray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the evening gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.
Come, Poet, come!
To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
A thousand dupes point here and there,
Bewildered by the show and glare;
And wise men half have learnt to doubt
Whether we are not best without.
Come, Poet; both but wait to see
Their error proved to them in thee.
## p. 3840 (#202) ###########################################
3840
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
And yet
Come, Poet, come!
In vain I seem to call.
Think not the living times forget.
Ages of heroes fought and fell
That Homer in the end might tell;
O'er groveling generations past
Upstood the Doric fane at last;
And countless hearts on countless years
Had wasted thoughts, and hopes, and fears,
Rude laughter and unmeaning tears,—
Ere England Shakespeare saw, or Rome
The pure perfection of her dome.
Others, I doubt not, if not we,
The issue of our toils shall see;
Young children gather as their own
The harvest that the dead had sown
The dead forgotten and unknown,
―
ON KEEPING WITHIN ONE'S PROPER SPHERE
From The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich
[A party of Oxford men spend their long vacation in Scotland.
course they return to their colleges. Adam, one of the party,—
"The grave man nicknamed Adam,
White-tied, clerical, silent, with antique square-cut waistcoat,»
receives a letter at Christmas from Philip (Hewson),
"The Chartist, the poet, the eloquent speaker. "]
In due
WHA
HAT I said at Balloch has truth in it; only distorted.
Plants are some for fruit, and some for flowering only;
Let there be deer in parks as well as kine in paddocks,
Grecian buildings upon the earth, as well as Gothic.
There may be men perhaps whose vocation it is to be idle,
Idle, sumptuous even, luxurious, if it must be:
Only let each man seek to be that for which Nature meant him,
Independent surely of pleasure, if not regardless,
Independent also of station, if not regardless;
Irrespective also of station, as of enjoyment;
Do his duty in that state of life to which God, not man, shall
call him.
If you were meant to plow, Lord Marquis, out with you and do it;
If you were meant to be idle, O beggar, behold I will feed thee:
## p. 3841 (#203) ###########################################
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
3841
Take my purse; you have far better right to it, friend, than the
Marquis.
If you were born for a groom,- and you seem by your dress to
believe so,—
Do it like a man, Sir George, for pay, in a livery-stable;
Yes, you may so release that slip of a boy at the corner,
Fingering books at the window, misdoubting the Eighth Command-
ment.
What, a mere Dean with those wits, that debtor-and-creditor head-
piece!
Go, my detective D. D. , take the place of Burns the gauger.
Ah, fair Lady Maria, God meant you to live and be lovely:
Be so then, and I bless you. But ye, ye spurious ware, who
Might be plain women, and can be by no possibility better!
Ye unhappy statuettes, ye miserable trinkets,
Poor alabaster chimney-piece ornaments under glass cases,
Come, in God's name, come down! the very French clock by you
Puts you to shame with ticking; the fire-irons deride you.
Break your glasses; ye can! come down; ye are not really plaster,
Come, in God's name, come down! do anything, be but some-
thing!
You, young girl, who have had such advantages, learnt so quickly,
Can you not teach? Oh, yes, and she likes Sunday-school extremely,
Only it's soon in the morning. Away! if to teach be your calling,
It is no play, but a business: off! go teach and be paid for it.
Surely that fussy old dowager yonder was meant for the counter;
Oh, she is notable very, and keeps her servants in order
Past admiration. Indeed, and keeps to employ her talent
How many, pray? to what use? Away! the hotel's her vocation.
Lady Sophie's so good to the sick, so firm and so gentle :
Is there a nobler sphere than of hospital nurse and matron ?
Hast thou for cooking a turn, little Lady Clarissa? in with them,
In with your fingers! Their beauty it spoils, but your own it
enhances;
For it is beautiful only to do the thing we are meant for.
But they will marry, have husbands, and children, and guests, and
households
Are there so many trades for a man,- for women one only,
First to look out for a husband and then to preside at his table?
VII-241
-
## p. 3842 (#204) ###########################################
3842
ARTHUR HUGH CLOUGH
!
Have you ever, Philip, my boy, looked at it in this way?
When the armies are set in array, and the battle beginning,
Is it well that the soldier whose post is far to the leftward
Say, I will go to the right, it is there I shall do best service?
There is a great Field-Marshal, my friend, who arrays our battalions;
Let us to Providence trust, and abide and work in our stations.
CONSIDER IT AGAIN
LD things need not be therefore true. "
O brother men, nor yet the new;
Ah! still awhile the old thought retain,
And yet consider it again!
«<
Ο
The souls of now two thousand years
Have laid up here their toils and fears,
And all the earnings of their pain,—
Ah, yet consider it again!
We! what do you see? each a space
Of some few yards before his face;
Does that the whole wide plan explain?
Ah, yet consider it again!
Alas! the great world goes its way,
And takes its truth from each new day;
They do not quit, nor yet retain,
Far less consider it again.
## p. 3842 (#205) ###########################################
## p. 3842 (#206) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
## p. 3842 (#207) ###########################################
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## p. 3842 (#208) ###########################################
3. TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
## p. 3843 (#209) ###########################################
3843
-
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
(1772-1834)
BY GEORGE E. WOODBERRY
-
AMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, the English poet and philosopher,
was born at Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire, October 21st,
1772. He was the ninth and youngest son of the vicar of
the parish, a man characterized by learning and also by some of its
foibles, under whose care he passed his childhood; but on the death
of his father he was sent up to London to be educated at Christ's
Hospital, and there spent, in companionship with Lamb, his school
days from 1782 to 1791. He went in the latter year to Jesus College
Cambridge. His career as an undergraduate was marked by an esca-
pade, his enlistment in the King's Regiment of Light Dragoons in
the winter of 1793-94, from which he was released by the influence
of his relatives; and in more important ways by his friendship with
Southey, whom he found on a visit to Oxford, and his engagement
to Sarah Fricker in the summer of 1794. He had already been at-
tached to another young lady, Mary Evans, with whose family he
had been intimate. In December 1794 he left Cambridge without
taking a degree, and on October 21st, 1795, he was married. His
biography from this point is one of confused and intricate detail,
which only a long story could set forth plainly and exactly. Its
leading external events were a residence in Germany in 1798-99 and
a voyage to Malta, with travel in Sicily and Italy in 1804-6; in its
inward development, the turning-points of his life were his first inti-
macy with the Wordsworths in 1797, during which his best poems
were composed; his subjection to the opium habit, with increasing
domestic unhappiness, in 1801-2; and his retreat under medical con-
trol to Highgate in 1816. He was practically separated from his.
family from the time of his voyage to Malta. Troubles of many
kinds filled all these years, but he had always a power to attract
friends who were deeply interested in his welfare, and he was never
without admirers and helpers. Before he withdrew to Highgate he
had resided first at Stowey in the neighborhood of Tom Poole, and
later at Greta Hall near the Wordsworths; but he was often away
from home, and after he ceased to be an inmate there, from 1806 to
1816, he led a wandering life, either in lodgings frequently changed,
or in visits to his friends. His resources were always small, and
## p. 3844 (#210) ###########################################
3844
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
from the start his friends were his patrons, making up subscriptions,
loans, and gifts for him; in 1798 the Wedgwoods gave him a pension
of £150 for life, which was soon secured for the support of his fam-
ily, and in 1812 one-half of this was withdrawn; in 1825 he was
granted a royal pension of one hundred guineas, and when this
lapsed in 1830 Frere made it up to him. De Quincey had distin-
guished himself by an act of singular and impulsive generosity to
him, upon first acquaintance. He was always cared for, though his
indulgence in opium made it difficult for those who knew the fact to
assist him directly in a wise way. His pecuniary embarrassment,
however, was constant and trying during a great part of his life; his
own wretchedness of spirit, under the painful conditions of his bodily
state and his moral as well as material position, was very great; but
through all these sufferings and trials he maintained sufficient energy
to leave behind him a considerable body of literary work. He died
July 25th, 1834.
The poetic genius of Coleridge, the highest of his many gifts.
found brilliant and fascinating expression. His poems-those in
which his fame lives-a are as unique as they are memorable; and
though their small number, their confined range, and the brief
period during which his faculty was exercised with full freedom
and power, seem to indicate a narrow vein, yet the remainder of
his work in prose and verse leaves an impression of extraordinary
and abundant intellectual force. In proportion as his imaginative
creations stand apart, the spirit out of which they came must have
possessed some singularity: and if the reader is not content with
simple æsthetic appreciation of what the gods provide, but has some
touch of curiosity leading him to look into the source of such re-
markable achievement and its human history, he is at once inter-
ested in the personality of the "subtle-souled psychologist," as
Shelley with his accurate critical insight first named him; in experi-
encing the fascination of the poetry one remembers the charm
which Coleridge had in life, that quality which arrested attention
in all companies and drew men's minds and hearts with a sense of
something marvelous in him "the most wonderful man," said
Wordsworth, "that I ever met. " The mind and heart of Coleridge,
his whole life, have been laid open by himself and his friends and
acquaintances without reserve in many volumes of letters and me-
moirs; it is easy to figure him as he lived and to recover his moods
and aspect: but in order to conceive his nature and define its traits,
it is necessary to take account especially of his incomplete and less
perfect work, of his miscellaneous interests, and those activities
which filled and confused his life without having any important
share in establishing his fame.
-
## p. 3845 (#211) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3845
The intellectual precocity which is the leading trait of Coleridge's
boyhood, in the familiar portrait of "the inspired charity-boy" drawn
by Lamb from schoolboy memories, is not unusual in a youth of
genius; but the omnivorousness of knowledge which he then dis-
played continued into his manhood. He consumed vast quantities of
book-learning. It is a more remarkable characteristic that from the
earliest period in which he comes into clear view, he was accustomed
to give out his ideas with freedom in an inexhaustible stream of
talk. The activity of his mind was as phenomenal as its receptivity.
In his college days, too, he was fanatical in all his energies. The
remark of Southey after Shelley's visit to him, that here was a
young man who was just what he himself had been in his college
days, is illustrative; for if Southey was then inflamed with radical-
ism, Coleridge was yet more deeply infected and mastered by that
wild fever of the revolutionary dawn. The tumult of Coleridge's
mind, its incessant action, the lack of discipline in his thought, of
restraint in his expression, of judgment in his affairs, are all impor-
tant elements in his character at a time which in most men would be
called the formative period of manhood, but which in him seems to
have been intensely chaotic; what is most noticeable, however, is the
volume of his mental energy. He expressed himself, too, in ways
natural to such self-abundance. He was always a discourser, if the
name may be used, from the London days at the "Salutation and
the Cat" of which Lamb tells, saying that the landlord was ready to
retain him because of the attraction of his conversation for cus-
tomers; and as he went on to the more set forms of such monologue,
he became a preacher without pay in Unitarian chapels, a journalist
with unusual capacity for ready and sonorous writing in the press, a
composer of whole periodicals such as his ventures The Watchman
and The Friend, and a lecturer using only slight notes as the mate-
rial of his remarks upon literature, education, philosophy, theology, or
whatever the subject might be. In all these methods of expression
which he took up one after the other, he merely talked in an ample
way upon multifarious topics; in the conversation, sermon, leading
article, written discourse, or flowing address, he was master of a
swelling and often brilliant volubility, but he had neither the cer-
tainty of the orator nor the unfailing distinction of the author;
there was an occasional and impromptu quality, a colloquial and
episodical manner, the style of the irresponsible speaker. In his
earlier days especially, the dominant note in Coleridge's whole
nature was excitement. He was always animated, he was often vio-
lent, he was always without the principle of control. Indeed, a
weakness of moral power seems to have been congenital, in the
sense that he was not permanently bound by a practical sense of
## p. 3846 (#212) ###########################################
3846
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
duty nor apparently observant of what place duty has in real life.
There was misdirection of his affairs from the time when they came
into his own hands; there was impulsiveness, thoughtlessness, a lack
of judgment which augured ill for him; and in its total effect this
amounted to folly. His intoxication with the scheme known as Pan-
tisocracy, by which he with Southey and a few like-minded project-
ors were to found a socialistic community on the banks of the
Susquehanna, is the most obvious comment on his practical sense.
But his marriage, with the anecdotes of its preliminaries (one of
which was that in those colloquies with Lamb at the London tavern,
so charmingly described by his boon companion, he had forgotten
his engagement or was indifferent to it), more strikingly exemplifies
the irresponsible course of his life, more particularly as it proved to
be ill-sorted, full of petty difficulties and makeshift expedients, and
in the end a disastrous failure. A radical social scheme and an im-
prudent marriage might have fallen to his share of human folly,
however, without exciting remark, if in other ways or at a later
time he had exhibited the qualities which would allow one to dismiss
these matters as mere instances of immaturity; but wherever Cole-
ridge's reasonable control over himself or his affairs is looked to, it
appears to have been feeble. On the other hand, the constancy of
his excitement is plain. It was not only mental, but physical. He
was, as a young man, full of energy and capable of a good deal of
hard exercise; he had animal spirits, and Wordsworth describes him
as "noisy" and "gamesome," as one who
"His limbs would toss about him with delight,
Like branches when strong winds the trees annoy;"
and from several passages of his own writing, which are usually dis-
regarded, the evidence of a spirit of rough humor and fun is easily
obtained. The truth is that Coleridge changed a great deal in his
life; he felt himself to be very different in later years from what
he was in the time when to his memory even he was a sort of glori-
fied spirit: and this earlier Coleridge had many traits which are
ignored sometimes, as Carlyle ignored them, and are sometimes
remembered rather as idealizations of his friends in their affectionate
thoughts of him, but any event are irreconcilable with the figure
of the last period of his life.
It has been suggested that there was something of disease or at
least of ill health in Coleridge always, and that it should be regarded
as influencing his temperament. Whether it were so or not, the plea
itself shows the fact. If excitement was the dominant note, as has
been said, in his whole nature, it could not exist without a physical
basis and accompaniment; and his bodily state appears to have been
## p. 3847 (#213) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3847
often less one of animation than of agitation, and his correspondence
frequently discloses moods that seem almost frantic. In the issue,
under stress of pain and trouble, he became an opium-eater; but his
physical nature may fairly be described as predisposed to such states
as lead to the use of opium and also result from its use, with the
attendant mental moods. His susceptibility to sensuous impressions,
to a voluptuousness of the entire being, together with a certain lassi-
tude and languor, lead to the same conclusion, which thus seems to be
supported on all sides,- that Coleridge was, in his youth and early
manhood, fevered through all his intellectual and sensuous nature,
and deficient on the moral and practical sides in those matters that
related to his personal affairs. It is desirable to bring this out in
plain terms, because in Coleridge it is best to acknowledge at once
that his character was, so far as our part-the world's part-in
him is concerned, of less consequence than his temperament; a
subtler and more profound thing than character, though without
moral meaning. It is not unfair to say, since literature is to be
regarded most profitably as the expression of human personality,
that with Coleridge the modern literature of temperament, as it has
been lately recognized in extreme phases, begins; not that tempera-
ment is a new thing in the century now closing, nor that it has
been without influence hitherto, but that now it is more often con-
sidered, and has in fact more often been, an exclusive ground of
artistic expression. The temperament of Coleridge was one of dif-
fused sensuousness physically, and of abnormal mental moods,—
moods of weakness, languor, collapse, of visionary imaginative life
with a night atmosphere of the spectral, moonlit, swimming, scarcely
substantial world; and the poems he wrote, which are the contribu-
tions he made to the world's literature, are based on this tempera-
ment, like some Fata Morgana upon the sea. The apparent exclusion
of reality from the poems in which his genius was most manifest
finds its analogue in the detachment of his own mind from the
moral, the practical, the usual in life as he led it in his spirit; and
his work of the highest creative sort, which is all there is to his
enduring fame, stands amid his prose and verse composition of a
lower sort like an island in the waste of waters. This may be best
shown, perhaps, by a gradual approach through his cruder to his
more perfect compositions.
The cardinal fact in Coleridge's genius is that notwithstanding his
immense sensuous susceptibilities and mental receptivity, and the
continual excitement of his spirit, he never rose into the highest
sphere of creative activity except for the brief period called his
annus mirabilis, when his great poems were written; and with this is
the further related fact that in him we witness the spectacle of the
## p. 3848 (#214) ###########################################
3848
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
imaginative instinct overborne and supplanted by the intellectual fac-
ulty exercising its speculative and critical functions; and in addition,
one observes in his entire work an extraordinary inequality not only
of treatment, but also of subject-matter. In general, he was an ego-
istic writer. His sensitiveness to nature was twofold: in the first
place he noticed in the objects and movements of nature evanescent
and minute details, and as his sense of beauty was keen, he saw and
recorded truly the less obvious and less common loveliness in the
phenomena of the elements and the seasons, and this gave distinc-
tion to his mere description and record of fact; in the second place
he often felt in himself moods induced by nature, but yet subjective,
-states of his own spirit, which sometimes deepened the charm of
night, for example, by his enjoyment of its placid aspects, and some-
times imparted to the external world a despair reflected from his
personal melancholy. In his direct treatment of nature, however,
as Mr. Stopford Brooke points out, he seldom achieves more than a
catalogue of his sensations, which though touched with imaginative
detail are never lifted and harmonized into lyrical unity; though he
can moralize nature in Wordsworth's fashion, when he does so the
result remains Wordsworth's and is stamped with that poet's origi-
nality; and in his own original work Coleridge never equaled either
the genius of Shelley, who can identify nature with himself, or the
charm of Tennyson, who can at least parallel nature's phenomena
with his own human moods. Coleridge would not be thought of as
a poet of nature, except in so far as he describes what he observes
in the way of record, or gives a metaphysical interpretation to phe-
nomena. This is the more remarkable because he had to an eminent
degree that intellectual power, that overmastering desire of the mind,
to rationalize the facts of life. It was this quality that made him a
philosopher, an analyst, a critic on the great lines of Aristotle, seek-
ing to impose an order of ethics and metaphysics on all artistic pro-
ductions. But in those poems in which he describes nature directly
and without metaphysical thought, there is no trace of anything
more than a sensuous order of his own perceptions. Beautiful and
often unique as his nature poems are, they are not creative. They
are rather in the main autobiographic; and it is surprising to notice
how large a proportion of his verse is thus autobiographic, not in
those phases of his own life which may be, or at least are thought
of as representative of human life in the mass, but which are per-
sonal, such as the lines written after hearing Wordsworth read the
'Prelude,' or those entitled 'Dejection. ' When his verse is not con-
fined to autobiographic expression, it is often a product of his interest
in his friends or in his family. What is not personal in it, of this
sort, is apt to be domestic or social.
## p. 3849 (#215) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3849
If we turn from the poems of nature to those concerned with
man, a similar shallowness, either of interest or of power, appears.
He was in early years a radical; he was stirred by the Revolution in
France, and he was emotionally charged with the ideas of the time,
-ideas of equality, fraternity, and liberty. But this interest died
out, as is shown by his political verse. He had none but a social
and a philosophical interest in any case. Man, the individual, did not
at any time attract him. There was nothing dramatic in his genius,
in the narrow and exact sense; he did not engage his curiosity or
his philosophy in individual fortunes. It results from this limitation
that his verse lacks human interest of the dramatic kind. The truth
was that he
was interested in thought rather than in deeds, in
human nature rather than in its concrete pity and terror. Thus he
did not seize on life itself as the material of his imagination and
reflection. In the case of man as in the case of nature he gives us
only an egoistic account, telling us of his own private fortune, his
fears, pains, and despairs, but only as a diary gives them; as he did
not transfer his nature impressions into the world of creative art,
so he did not transfer his personal experiences into that world.
What has been said would perhaps be accepted, were it not for
the existence of those poems, The Ancient Mariner,' 'Christabel,'
'Kubla Khan,' which are the marvelous creations of his genius. In
these it will be said there is both a world of nature new created, and
a dramatic method and interest. It is enough for the purpose of the
analysis if it be granted that nowhere else in Coleridge's work,
except in these and less noticeably in a few other instances, do these
high characteristics occur. The very point which is here to be
brought out is that Coleridge applied that intellectual power, that
overmastering desire of the mind to rationalize the phenomena of
life, which has been mentioned as his great mental trait,- that he
applied this faculty with different degrees of power at different
times, so that his poetry falls naturally into higher and inferior
categories; in the autobiographic verse, in the political and dramatic
verse which forms so large a part of his work, it appears that he
did not have sufficient feeling or exercise sufficient power to raise it
out of the lower levels of composition; in his great works of con-
structive and impersonal art, of moral intensity or romantic beauty
and fascination, he did so exercise the creative imagination as to
make these of the highest rank, or at least one of them.
'The Ancient Mariner,' apart from its many minor merits, has
this distinction in Coleridge's work, it is a poem of perfect unity.
'Christabel' is a fragment, 'Kubla Khan' is a glimpse; and though
the Ode to France, Love, Youth, and Age, and possibly a few
other short pieces, have this highest artistic virtue of unity, yet in
## p. 3850 (#216) ###########################################
3850
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
them it is of a simpler kind. The Ancient Mariner,' on the other
hand, is a marvel of construction in that its unity is less complex
than manifold; it exists, however the form be examined. In the
merely external sense, the telling of the tale to the Wedding
Guest, with the fact that the wedding is going on, gives it unity; in
the merely internal sense, the moral lesson of the salvation of the
slayer of the albatross by the medium of love felt toward living
things, subtly yet lucidly worked out as the notion is, gives it unity:
but in still other ways, as a story of connected and consequential
incidents with a plot, a change of fortune, a climax, and the other
essentials of this species of tale-telling, it has unity; and if its
conception either of the physical or the ethical world be analyzed,
these too - and these are the fundamental things-are found con-
sistent wholes. It nevertheless remains true that this system of
nature as a vitalized but not humanized mode of life, with its bird,
its spirit, its magical powers, is not the nature that we know or
believe to be, it is a modern presentation of an essentially primitive
and animistic belief; and similarly this system of human life,—if the
word human can be applied to it, with its dead men, its skeleton
ship, its spirit sailors, its whole miracle of spectral being,-is not the
life we know or believe to be; it is an incantation, a simulacrum.
It may still be true therefore that the imaginative faculty of Cole-
ridge was not applied either to nature or human life, in the ordinary
sense. And this it is that constitutes the uniqueness of the poem,
and its wonderful fascination. Coleridge fell heir, by the accidents
of time and the revolutions of taste, to the ballad style, its sim-
plicity, directness, and narrative power; he also was most attracted
to the machinery of the supernatural, the weird, the terrible, almost
to the grotesque and horrid, as these literary motives came into
fashion in the crude beginnings of romanticism in our time; his
subtle mind, his fine senses, his peculiar susceptibility to the mystic
and shadowy in nature,—as shown by his preference of the moon-
light, dreamy, or night aspects of real nature, to its brilliant beau-
ties in the waking world,—gave him ease and finesse in the handling
of such subject-matter; and he lived late enough to know that all
this eerie side of human experience and imaginative capacity,
inherited from primeval ages but by no means yet deprived of
plausibility, could be effectively used only as an allegoric or scenic
setting of what should be truth to the ethical sense; he combined
one of the highest lessons of advanced civilization, one of the last
results of spiritual perception,- the idea of love toward life in any
form, with the animistic beliefs and supernatural fancies of the
crude ages of the senses. This seems to be the substantial matter;
and in this he was, to repeat Shelley's phrase, the "subtle-souled
-
## p. 3851 (#217) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3851
psychologist. "
The material of his imagination, on the sensuous
side, was of the slightest: it was the supernaturalism of the romantic
movement, somewhat modified by being placed in connection with
the animal world; and he put this to use as a means of illustrating
spiritual truth. He thus became the first of those who have employed
the supernatural in our recent literature without losing credence for
it, as an allegory of psychological states, moral facts, or illusions real
to the eye that sees them and having some logical relation to the
past of the individual; of such writers Hawthorne and Poe are emi-
nent examples, and both of them, it may be remarked, are writers
in whom temperament rather than character is the ground of their
creative work. The intimate kinship between imagination so directed
and the speculative philosophical temper is plain to see. In 'Chris-
tabel' on the other hand, the moral substance is not apparent: the
place filled by the moral ideas which are the centres of the narra-
tive in The Ancient Mariner,' is taken here by emotional situations;
but the supernaturalism is practically the same in both poems, and
in both is associated with that mystery of the animal world to man,
most concentrated and vivid in the fascination ascribed traditionally
to the snake, which is the animal motive in Christabel' as the
goodness of the albatross in the 'The Ancient Mariner. In these
poems the good and the bad omens that ancient augurs minded are
made again dominant over men's imagination. Such are the signal
and unique elements in these poems, which have besides that wealth
of beauty in detail, of fine diction, of liquid melody, of sentiment,
thought, and image, which belong only to poetry of the highest
order, and which are too obvious to require any comment. 'Kubla
Khan' is a poem of the same kind, in which the mystical effect is
given almost wholly by landscape; it is to The Ancient Mariner'
and 'Christabel' what protoplasm is to highly organized cells.
If it be recognized then that the imagery of Coleridge in the
characteristic parts of these cardinal poems is as pure allegory, is as
remote from nature or man, as is the machinery of fairy-land and
chivalry in Spenser, for example, and he obtains credibility by the
psychological and ethical truth presented in this imagery, it is not
surprising that his work is small in amount; for the method is not
only a difficult one, but the poetic machinery itself is limited and
meagre. The poverty of the subject-matter is manifest, and the re-
strictions to its successful use are soon felt. It may well be doubted
whether 'Christabel' would have gained by being finished. In 'The
Ancient Mariner' the isolation of the man is a great advantage; if
there had been any companion for him, the illusion could not have
been entire: as it is, what he experiences has the wholeness and
truth within itself of a dream, or of a madman's world,- there is no
## p. 3852 (#218) ###########################################
3852
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
standard of appeal outside of his own senses and mind, no real
world; but in Christabel' the serpentine fable goes on in a world of
fact and action, and as soon as the course of the story involved this
fable in the probabilities and actual occurences of life, it might well
be that the tale would have turned into one of simple enchantment
and magic, as seems likely from what has been told of its continua-
tion; certainly it could not have equaled the earlier poem, or have
been in the same kind with it, unless the unearthly magic, the spell,
were finally completely dissolved into the world of moral truth as is
the case with The Ancient Mariner. ' Coleridge found it still more
impossible to continue 'Kubla Khan. ' It seems a fair inference to
conclude that Coleridge's genius, however it suffered from the mis-
fortunes and ills of his life, was in these works involved in a field,
however congenial, yet of narrow range and infertile in itself.
In
poetic style it is to be observed that he kept what he had gained;
the turbid diction of the earlier period never came back to trouble
him, and the cadences he had formed still gave their music to his
verse. The change, the decline, was not in his power of style; it
was in his power of imagination, if at all, but the fault may have
laid in the capacities of the subject-matter. A similar thing certainly
happened in his briefer ballad poetry, in that of which Love,' The
Three Graces,' 'Alice Du Clos,' and 'The Dark Ladie,' are examples;
the matter there, the machinery of the romantic ballad, was no
longer capable of use; that sort of literature was dead from the
exhaustion of its motives. The great 'Ode to France,' in which he
reached his highest point of eloquent and passionate expression,
seems to mark the extinction in himself of the revolutionary impulse.
On the whole, while the excellence of much of the remainder of his
verse, even in later years, is acknowledged, and its originality in
several instances, may it not be that in his greatest work Coleridge
came to an end because of an impossibility in the kind itself? The
supernatural is an accessory rather than a main element in the in-
terpretation of life which literary genius undertakes; Coleridge so
subordinates it here by making it contributory to a moral truth; but
such a practice would seem to be necessarily incidental to a poet
who was also so intellectual as Coleridge, and not to be adopted as
a permanent method of self-expression.
From whatever cause, the fact was that Coleridge ceased to create
in poetry, and fell back on that fluent, manifold, voluminous faculty
he possessed of absorbing and giving out ideas in vast quantities, as
it were by bulk. He attended especially to the theory of art as he
found it illustrated in the greatest poets, and he popularized among
literary men a certain body of doctrine regarding criticism, its
growth and methods; and in later years he worked out metaphysical
## p. 3853 (#219) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3853
theological views which he inculcated in ways which won for him
recognition as a practical influence in contemporary church opinion.
In these last years of his lecturing and discoursing in private, the
figure he makes is pathetic, though Carlyle describes it with a grim
humor, as any one may read in the 'Life of Sterling': over against
that figure should be set the descriptions of the young Coleridge by
Dorothy Wordsworth and Lamb; and after these perhaps the contrast
which Coleridge himself draws between his spirit and his body may
enable a reader to fuse the two-youth and age-
into one. What-
ever were the weaknesses of his nature and the trials of his life, of
which one keeps silent, he was deeply loved by friends of many
different minds, who if they grew cold, had paid at least once this
tribute to the charm, the gentleness, and the delight of his human
companionship.
Условия
KUBLA KHAN
N XANADU did Kubla Khan
IN
A stately pleasure-dome decree,
Where Alph the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With wall and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover:
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething.
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
## p. 3854 (#220) ###########################################
3854
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail;
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw;
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air-
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! beware
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
## p. 3855 (#221) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3855
THE ALBATROSS
From The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'
ITH sloping masts and dripping prow,
WITH As who, pursued with yell and blow,
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head,
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward aye we fled.
And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen;
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken-
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross:
Thorough the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
And a good south-wind sprung up behind;
The Albatross did follow,
And every day, for food or play,
Came to the mariner's hollo!
In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud,
It perched for vespers nine;
Whilst all the night, through fog-smoke white,
Glimmered the white moonshine. —
## p. 3856 (#222) ###########################################
3856
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
God save thee, ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!
Why look'st thou so? -With my cross-bow
I shot the Albatross!
THE Sun now rose upon the right;
Out of the sea came he,
Still hid in mist, and on the left
Went down into the sea.
And the good south-wind still blew behind,
But no sweet bird did follow,
Nor any day for food or play
Came to the mariner's hollo!
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work 'em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
That made the breeze to blow!
Nor dim nor red, like God's own head
The glorious Sun uprist:
Then all averred, I had killed the bird
That brought the fog and mist.
'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay,
That bring the fog and mist.
The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea.
Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt 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;
## p. 3857 (#223) ###########################################
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
3857
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.
VII-242
The very deep did rot: O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.
About, about, in reel and rout
The death-fires danced at night;
The water, like a witch's oils,
Burnt green, and blue, and white.
And some in dreams assurèd were
Of the spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathoms deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.
And every tongue, through utter drought,
Was withered at the' root;
We could not speak, no more than if
We had been choked with soot.
Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
