As water-lilies ripple thy slow stream! Dear native haunts! where Virtue still is gay,

Where Friendship's fixed star sheds a mellowed ray,

Where Love a crown of thornless Roses wears,

Where soften'd Sorrow smiles within her tears;

And Memory, with a Vestal's chaste employ,

Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of joy!

No more your sky-larks melting from the sight

Shall thrill the attuned heart-string with delight

No more shall deck your pensive Pleasures sweet

With wreaths of sober hue my evening

seat.

Yet dear to Fancy's eye your varied

scene

Of wood, hill, dale, and sparkling brook between!

Yet sweet to Fancy's ear the warbled song,

That soars on Morning's wing your vales

among.

Scenes of my Hope! the achinge ye ye leave

Like yon bright hues that paint the clouds of eve!

Tearful and saddening with the saddened blaze

Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful gaze:

Sees shades on shades with deeper tint

impend,

Till chill and damp the moonless night descend. 1793. 1796.

LEWTI

OR THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE-CHANT

AT midnight by the stream I roved,
To forget the form I loved.
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

The Moon was high, the moonlight gleam

And the shadow of a star Heaved upon Tamaha's stream:

But the rock shone brighter far,

The rock half sheltered from my view By pendent boughs of tressy yew.—

So shines my Lewti's forehead fair, Gleaming through her sable hair, Image of Lewti! from my mind Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

I saw a cloud of palest hue,

Onward to the moon it passed ;
Still brighter and more bright it grew
With floating colors not a few,

Till it reach'd the moon at last :
Then the cloud was wholly bright,
With a rich and amber light!
And so with many a hope I seek

And with such joy I find my Lewti And even so my pale wan cheek

Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty! Nay, treacherous image! leave mind,

If Lewti never will be kind.

The little cloud-it floats away,

Away it goes; away so soon?
Alas! it has no power to stay:
Its hues are dim, its hues are gray
Away it passes from the moon!
How mournfully it seems to fly,

Ever fading more and more,
To joyless regions of the sky-
And now 'tis whiter than before!
As white as my poor cheek will be.
When, Lewti! on my couch I lie,
A dying man for love of thee.
Nay, treacherous image! leave n
mind-

And yet, thou didst not look unkind.

O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure
To see you move beneath the moon,
I would it were your true delight
To sleep by day and wake all night.

I know the place where Lewti lies
When silent night has closed her eyes:
It is a breezy jasmine-bower,
The nightingale sings o'er her head:

Voice of the Night! had I the power That leafy labyrinth to thread,

And creep, like thee, with soundless tread,

I then might view her bosom white
Heaving lovely to my sight,

As these two swans together heave
On the gently-swelling wave.

Oh! that she saw me in a dream,

And dreamt that I had died for care; All pale and wasted I would seem Yet fair withal, as spirits are! I'd die indeed, if I might see Her bosom heave, and heave for me! Soothe, gentle image! soothe my mind! To-morrow Lewti may be kind.

1794. April 13, 1798.

LA FAYETTE

As when far off the warbled strains are heard

That soar on Morning's wing the vales among:

Within his cage the imprisoned matin bird

Swells the full chorus with a generous

song:

He bathes no pinion in the dewy light, No Father's joy, no Lover's bliss he shares.

Yet still the rising radiance cheers his sight

His fellows' freedom soothes the captive's cares!

Thou, FAYETTE! who didst wake with startling voice

Life's better sun from that long wintry night,

Thus in thy Country's triumphs shalt rejoice

And mock with raptures high the dungeon's might:

For lo! the morning struggles into day, And Slavery's spectres shriek and vanish from the ray!

1794, December 15, 1794.

REFLECTIONS ON HAVING LEFT A PLACE OF RETIREMENT Sermoni propriora.-HOR.

Low was our pretty Cot: our tallest rose Peeped at the chamber-window. We could hear

At silent noon, and eve, and early morn, The sea's faint murmur. In the open

air

Our myrtles blossom'd; and across the porch

Thick jasmines twined: the little landscape round

Was green and woody, and refreshed the eye.

It was a spot which you might aptly call

The Valley of Seclusion! Once I saw
(Hallowing his Sabbath-day by quietness)
A wealthy son of commerce saunter by,
Bristowa's citizen: methought, it calmed
His thirst of idle gold, and made him

muse

With wiser feelings: for he paused, and looked

With a pleased sadness, and gazed all around,

Then eyed our Cottage, and gazed round again,

And sighed, and said, it was a Blessed Place.

And we were blessed. Oft with patient

ear

Long-listening to the viewless sky-lark's note

(Viewless, or haply for a moment seen Gleaming on sunny wings) in whispered tones

I've said to my beloved, "Such, sweet girl!

The inobtrusive song of Happiness, Unearthly minstrelsy! then only heard When the soul seeks to hear; when all is hushed,

And the heart listens !"

But the time, when first From that low dell, steep up the stony mount

I climbed with perilous toil and reached the top,

Oh! what a goodly scene! Here the bleak mount,

The bare bleak mountain speckled thin with sheep;

Gray clouds, that shadowing spot the sunny fields:

And river, now with bushy rocks o'er browed,

Thy jasmine and thy window-peeping

rose,

And myrtles fearless of the mild sea air And I shall sigh fond wishes-swee abode!

Ah-had none greater! And that al had such!

It might be so-but the time is not yet Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come! 1795. October, 1796.

TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY

AN ALLEGORY

ON the wide level of a mountain's head (I knew not where, but 'twas som faery place)

Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails out spread,

Two lovely children run an endless rac A sister and a brother!

This far outstript the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face. And looks and listens for the boy b hind:

For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step passed,

And knows not whether he be first last. ?1. . . 1817.

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY

PRISON

ADDRESSED TO CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE, LONDON

In the June of 1797 some long-expected frien paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on morning of their arrival, he met with an ac dent, which disabled him from walking dur the whole time of their stay. One eveni when they had left him for a few hours. composed the following lines in the gard bower. (Coleridge.)

WELL, they are gone, and here must remain,

This lime-tree bower my prison! I ha lost

Beauties and feelings, such as ΠΟΥ have been

Most sweet to my remembrance ev when age

Included by Coleridge among his "Juve Poems." There is no other evidence to indic at what date it was written. See, however, a n uscript note of 1811 on the same subject, g in Anima Poetae at the beginning of Cha VIII.

Beat its straight path along the dusky air

Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

Had cross'd the mighty orb's dilated glory,

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,

Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life. 1797. 1800.

KUBLA KHAN

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's" Pilgrimage": "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away, like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter.

Then all the charm Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth who scarcely dar'st lift up thine

mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Aupiov ädiov aaw, but the to-morrow isyet to come. (Coleridge's note, 1816.)

IN Xanadu did Kubla Khan

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 walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bear ing 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 cedar cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon wa haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover And from this chasm, with ceaseles turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants wer breathing,

A

mighty fountain momently wa forced :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burs Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,

Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher

flail: