The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Night and day, I feel the trouble,
Of the Wanderer in my soul.
RUTH.
When Ruth was left half desolate,
Her Father took another Mate;
And so, not seven years old,
The slighted Child at her own will
Went wandering over dale and hill
In thoughtless freedom bold.
And she had made a pipe of straw
And from that oaten pipe could draw
All sounds of winds and floods;
Had built a bower upon the green,
As if she from her birth had been
An Infant of the woods.
There came a Youth from Georgia’s shore,
A military Casque he wore
With splendid feathers drest;
He brought them from the Cherokees;
The feathers nodded in the breeze
And made a gallant crest.
From Indian blood you deem him sprung:
Ah no! he spake the English tongue
And bare a Soldier’s name;
And when America was free
From battle and from jeopardy
He cross the ocean came.
With hues of genius on his cheek
In finest tones the Youth could speak.
— While he was yet a Boy
The moon, the glory of the sun,
And streams that murmur as they run
Had been his dearest joy.
He was a lovely Youth! I guess
The panther in the wilderness
Was not so fair as he;
And when he chose to sport and play,
No dolphin ever was so gay
Upon the tropic sea.
Among the Indians he had fought,
And with him many tales he brought
Of pleasure and of fear,
Such tales as told to any Maid
By such a Youth in the green shade
Were perilous to hear.
He told of Girls, a happy rout,
Who quit their fold with dance and shout
Their pleasant Indian Town
To gather strawberries all day long,
Returning with a choral song
When daylight is gone down.
He spake of plants divine and strange
That ev’ry day their blossoms change,
Ten thousand lovely hues!
With budding, fading, faded flowers
They stand the wonder of the bowers
From morn to evening dews.
He told of the Magnolia, spread
High as a cloud, high over head!
The Cypress and her spire,
Of flowers that with one scarlet gleam
Cover a hundred leagues and seem
To set the hills on fire.
The Youth of green Savannahs spake,
And many an endless endless lake
With all its fairy crowds
Of islands that together lie
As quietly as spots of sky
Among the evening clouds:
And then he said “How sweet it were
A fisher or a hunter there,
A gardener in the shade,
Still wandering with an easy mind
To build a household fire and find
A home in every glade.”
”What days and what sweet years! Ah me!
Our life were life indeed, with thee
So pass’d in quiet bliss,
And all the while” said he “to know
That we were in a world of woe.
On such an earth as this!”
And then he sometimes interwove
Dear 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
My helpmate in the woods to be,
Our shed at night to rear;
Or run, my own adopted bride,
A sylvan huntress at my side
And drive the flying deer.
”Beloved Ruth!” No more he said
Sweet Ruth alone 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,
A Husband and a Wife.”
Even so they did; and I may say
That to sweet Ruth that happy day
Was more than human life.
Through dream and vision did she sink,
Delighted all the while to think
That on those lonesome floods
And green Savannahs she should share
His board with lawful joy, and bear
His name in the wild woods.
But, as you have before been told,
This Stripling, sportive gay and bold,
And, with his dancing crest,
So beautiful, through savage lands
Had roam’d about with vagrant bands
Of Indians in the West.
The wind, the tempest roaring high,
The tumult of a tropic sky
Might well be dangerous food.
For him, a Youth to whom was given
So much of earth so much of Heaven,
And such impetuous blood.
Whatever in those climes he found
Irregular in sight or sound
Did to his mind impart
A kindred impulse, seem’d allied
To his own powers, and justified
The workings of his heart.