'How pleasant,' then he said, 'it were A fisher or a hunter there, In sunshine or through shade To wander with an easy mind, And build a household fire, and find A home in every glade! 'What days and what bright years! Ah me! Our life were life indeed, with thee So passed in quiet bliss, And all the while,' said he, 'to know And then he sometimes interwove Fond thoughts about a father's love: For there,' said he, ' are spun Around the heart such tender ties, That our own children to our eyes Are dearer than the sun. 'Sweet Ruth! and could you go with me 'Beloved Ruth !'-No more he said. The wakeful Ruth at midnight shed A solitary tear : She thought again-and did agree With him to sail across the sea, And drive the flying deer. 'And now, as fitting is and right, We in the church our faith will plight, Even so they did; and I may say Through dream and vision did she sink, But, as you have before been told, The wind, the tempest roaring high, Whatever in those climes he found Irregular in sight or sound Did to his mind impart A kindred impulse, seemed allied To his own powers, and justified Nor less, to feed voluptuous thought, The beauteous forms of nature wrought, Fair trees and lovely flowers; The breezes their own languor lent; The stars had feelings, which they sent Into those gorgeous bowers. Yet, in his worst pursuits, I ween For passions linked to forms so fair But ill he lived, much evil saw, His genius and his moral frame Were thus impaired, and he became The slave of low desires: A man who, without self-control, Would seek what the degraded soul Unworthily admires. And yet he with no feigned delight Sometimes, most earnestly, he said: I crossed the Atlantic main. 'It was a fresh and glorious worldA banner bright that shone unfurled Before me suddenly: I looked upon those hills and plains, And seemed as if let loose from chains, To live at liberty. 'But wherefore speak of this? For now, Dear Ruth! with thee, I know not how, I feel my spirit burn; My soul from darkness is released, Full soon that purer mind was gone; Meanwhile, as thus with him it fared, They for the voyage were prepared, And went to the sea-shore; But, when they thither came, the youth Deserted his poor bride, and Ruth Could never find him more. God help thee, Ruth!-Such pains she had, And there, with many a doleful song Yet sometimes milder hours she knew, Nor wanted sun, nor rain, nor dew, Nor pastimes of the May; They all were with her in her cell; And a clear brook with cheerful knell Did o'er the pebbles play. When Ruth three seasons thus had lain, But of the vagrant none took thought; Among the fields she breathed again; And, coming to the banks of Tone, The engines of her pain, the tools That shaped her sorrow, rocks and pools, The vernal leaves-she loved them still; A barn her winter bed supplies; She sleeps beneath the greenwood tree, An innocent life, yet far astray! Sore aches she needs must have! but less If she is pressed by want of food And there she begs at one steep place, That oaten pipe of hers is mute, Or thrown away; but with a flute Her loneliness she cheers: This flute, made of a hemlock stalk, At evening in his homeward walk The Quantock woodman hears. I, too, have passed her on the hills Farewell! and when thy days are told, A Christian psalm for thee. To a Highland Girl. [At Inversneyd, upon Loch Lomond.] And those gray rocks; that household lawn; A murmur near the silent lake; This little bay, a quiet road That holds in shelter thy abode In truth, unfolding thus, ye seem I bless thee with a human heart: What hand but would a garland cull Thou art to me but as a wave Thy father-anything to thee! Now thanks to Heaven! that of its grace Hath led me to this lonely place. Joy have I had; and going hence, I bear away my recompense. In spots like these it is we prize As I do now, the cabin small, Laodamia. 'With sacrifice before the rising morn, Restore him to my sight-great Jove, restore!' So speaking, and by fervent love endowed O terror! what hath she perceived?-O joy! Mild Hermes spake, and touched her with his wand That calms all fear: 'Such grace hath crowned thy prayer, Laodamia! that at Jove's command Thy husband walks the paths of upper air; He comes to tarry with thee three hours' space; Forth sprang the impassioned queen her lord to clasp, 'Protesiláus, lo! thy guide is gone! 'Great Jove, Laodamia! doth not leave His gifts imperfect. Spectre though I be, I am not sent to scare thee or deceive; But in reward of thy fidelity. And something also did my worth obtain; For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain. Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold That the first Greek who touched the Trojan strand Should die but me the threat could not withhold: A generous cause a victim did demand; And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain; A self-devoted chief-by Hector slain.' 'Supreme of heroes; bravest, noblest, best! 'But thou, though capable of sternest deed, 'No spectre greets me-no vain shadow this; "This visage tells thee that my doom is past; Nor should the change be mourned, even if the joys Of sense were able to return as fast And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys Those raptures duly-Erebus disdains; Calm pleasures there abide-majestic pains. 'Be taught, O faithful consort, to control 'Ah, wherefore? Did not Hercules by force Wrest from the guardian monster of the tomb Alcestis, a reanimated corse, Given back to dwell on earth in vernal bloom? Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years, And son stood a youth 'mid youthful peers. 'The gods to us are merciful; and they Yet further may relent; for mightier far Is love, though oft to agony distrest, And though his favourite seat be feeble woman's breast. 'But if thou goest, I follow.' 'Peace!' he said; She looked upon him, and was calmed and cheered; The ghastly colour from his lips had fled. In his deportment, shape, and mien appeared He spake of love, such love as spirits feel Of all that is most beauteous-imaged there Yet there the soul shall enter which hath earned That privilege by virtue. Ill,' said he, "The end of man's existence I discerned, Who from ignoble games and revelry Could draw, when we had parted, vain delight, While tears were thy best pastime, day and night: 'And while my youthful peers before my eyes- The wished-for wind was given: I then revolved The oracle upon the silent sea; And, if no worthier led the way, resolved "Yet bitter, ofttimes bitter was the pang, When of thy loss I thought, beloved wife! On thee too fondly did my memory hang, And on the joys we shared in mortal life; The paths which we had trod-these fountains, flowers; My new-planned cities, and unfinished towers. 66 'But should suspense permit the foe to cry, Old frailties then recurred; but lofty thought, 'And thou, though strong in love, art all too weak 'Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend- Aloud she shrieked; for Hermes reappears! where he had Charles Lamb for a school-fellow. He describes himself as being, from eight to fourteen, 'a playless day-dreamer, a helluo librorum;' and in this instance, 'the child was father of the man,' for such was Coleridge to the end of his life. A stranger whom he had accidentally met one day on the streets of London, and who was struck with his conversation, made him free of a circulating library, and he read through the catalogue, folios and all. At fourteen, he had, like Gibbon, a stock of erudition that might have puzzled a doctor, and a degree of ignorance of which a school-boy would have been ashamed. He had no ambition; his father was dead, and he actually thought of apprenticing himself to a shoemaker who lived near the school. The head-master, Bowyer, interfered, and prevented this additional honour to the craft of St Crispin, already made illustrious by Gifford and Bloomfield. Coleridge became deputy-Grecian, or head-scholar, and obtained an exhibition or presentation from Christ's Hospital to Jesus' College, Round the dear shade she would have clung; 'tis Cambridge, where he remained from 1791 to 1793. vain; The hours are past-too brief had they been years; Swift toward the realms that know not earthly day, By no weak pity might the gods be moved: -Yet tears to human suffering are due; SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE, a profound thinker and rich imaginative poet, enjoyed a high reputation during the latter years of his life for his colloquial eloquence and metaphysical and critical powers, of which only a few fragmentary specimens remain. His poetry also indicated more than it achieved. Visions of grace, tenderness, and majesty seem ever to have haunted him. Some of these he embodied in exquisite verse; but he wanted concentration and steadiness of purpose to avail himself sufficiently of his intellectual riches. A happier destiny was also perhaps wanting; for much of Coleridge's life was spent in poverty and dependence, amidst disappointment and ill-health, and in the irregularity caused by an unfortunate and excessive use of opium, which tyrannised over him for many years with unrelenting severity. Amidst daily drudgery for the periodical press, and in nightly dreams distempered and feverish, he wasted, to use his own expression, the prime and manhood of his intellect.' The poet was a native of Devonshire, being born on the 20th of October 1772 at Ottery St Mary, of which parish his father was vicar. He received the principal part of his education at Christ's Hospital, In his first year at college he gained the Brown gold- And with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea, Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: And flung a magic light o'er all her hills and groves, To all that braved the tyrant-quelling lance, I dimmed thy light, or damped thy holy flame; In London, Coleridge soon felt himself forlorn and destitute, and he enlisted as a soldier in the 15th, Elliot's Light Dragoons. On his arrival at the quarters of the regiment,' says his friend and biographer, Mr Gillman, 'the general of the district inspected the recruits, and looking hard at Coleridge, with a military air, inquired: "What's your name, sir?" "Comberbach." (The name he had assumed.) "What do you come here for, sir?" as if doubting whether he had any business there. "Sir," said Coleridge, "for what most other persons come-to be made a soldier." "Do you think," said the general, "you can run a Frenchman through the body?" "I do not know," replied Coleridge, "as I never tried; but I'll let a Frenchman run me through the body before I'll run away." "That will do," said the general, and Coleridge was turned into the ranks.' The poet made a poor dragoon, and never advanced beyond the awkward squad. He wrote letters, however, for all his comrades, and they attended to his horse and accoutrements. After four months' service-December 1793 to April 1794-the history and circumstances of Coleridge became known. According to one account, he had written under his saddle on the stable-wall Eheu! quam infortunii miserrimum est fuisse felicem, which led to inquiry on the part of the captain of his troop, who had more regard for the classics than Ensign Northerton in Tom Jones. Another account attributes the termination of his military career to a chance recognition on the street. His family being apprised of his situation, his discharge was obtained on the 10th of April 1794. He seems then to have set about publishing his Juvenile Poems by subscription, and while at Oxford in June of the same year, he met with Southey, and an intimacy immediately sprung up between them. Coleridge was then an ardent republican and a Socinian-full of high hopes and anticipations, 'the golden exhalations of the dawn.' In conjunction with his new friend Southey, with Robert Lovell, the son of a wealthy Quaker, George Burnett, a fellow-collegian from Somersetshire, Robert Allen, then at Corpus Christi College, and Edmund Seaward, of a Herefordshire family, also a fellow-collegian, Coleridge planned and proposed to carry out a scheme of emigration to America. They were to found in the New World a Pantisocracy, or state of society in which each was to have his portion of work, and their wives-all were to be married-were to cook and perform domestic offices, the poets cultivating literature in their hours of leisure, with neither king nor priest to mar their felicity. From building castles in the air,' as Southey has said, 'to framing commonwealths was an easy transition.' For some months this delusion lasted; but funds were wanting, and could not be readily raised. Southey and Coleridge gave a course of public lectures, and wrote a tragedy on the Fall of Robespierre, and the former soon afterwards proceeding with his uncle to Spain and Portugal, the Pantisocratic scheme was abandoned. Coleridge and Southey married two sisters-Lovell, who died in the following year, had previously been married to a third sister-ladies of the name of Fricker, amiable, but wholly without fortune. Coleridge, still ardent, wrote two political pamphlets, concluding 'that truth should be spoken at all times, but more especially at those times when to speak truth is dangerous.' He established also a periodical in prose and verse, entitled The Watchman, with the motto, "That all might know the truth, and that the truth might make us free.' IIe watched in vain. Coleridge's incurable want of order and punctuality, and his philosophical theories, tired out and disgusted his readers, and the work * Miss Mitford states that the arrangement for Coleridge's discharge was made at her father's house at Reading. Captain Ogle-in whose troop the poet served-related at table one day the story of the learned recruit, when it was resolved to make exertions for his discharge. There would have been some difficulty in the case, had not one of the servants waiting at table been induced to enlist in his place. The poet, Miss Mitford says, never forgot her father's zeal in the cause. |