The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Читать онлайн книгу.
SONNET: COMPOSED ON A JOURNEY HOMEWARD; THE AUTHOR HAVING RECEIVED INTELLIGENCE
OF THE BIRTH OF A SON, SEPT. 20, 1796
Oft o’er my brain does that strange fancy roll
Which makes the present (while the flash doth last)
Seem a mere semblance of some unknown past,
Mixed with such feelings, as perplex the soul
Self-questioned in her sleep; and some have said 5
We liv’d, ere yet this robe of flesh we wore.
O my sweet baby! when I reach my door,
If heavy looks should tell me thou art dead,
(As sometimes, through excess of hope, I fear)
I think that I should struggle to believe 10
Thou wert a spirit, to this nether sphere
Sentenc’d for some more venial crime to grieve;
Did’st scream, then spring to meet Heaven’s quick reprieve,
While we wept idly o’er thy little bier!
SONNET: TO A FRIEND WHO ASKED, HOW I FELT WHEN THE NURSE FIRST PRESENTED MY INFANT TO ME
Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first
I scann’d that face of feeble infancy:
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my child might be!
But when I saw it on its mother’s arm, 5
And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o’er its features with a tearful smile)
Then I was thrill’d and melted, and most warm
Impress’d a father’s kiss: and all beguil’d
Of dark remembrance and presageful fear, 10
I seem’d to see an angel-form appear —
‘Twas even thine, belovéd woman mild!
So for the mother’s sake the child was dear,
And dearer was the mother for the child.
SONNET
[TO CHARLES LLOYD]
The piteous sobs that choke the Virgin’s breath
For him, the fair betrothéd Youth, who lies
Cold in the narrow dwelling, or the cries
With which a Mother wails her darling’s death,
These from our nature’s common impulse spring, 5
Unblam’d, unprais’d; but o’er the piléd earth
Which hides the sheeted corse of grey-hair’d Worth,
If droops the soaring Youth with slacken’d wing;
If he recall in saddest minstrelsy
Each tenderness bestow’d, each truth imprest, 10
Such grief is Reason, Virtue, Piety!
And from the Almighty Father shall descend
Comforts on his late evening, whose young breast
Mourns with no transient love the Agéd Friend.
TO A YOUNG FRIEND
ON HIS PROPOSING TO DOMESTICATE WITH THE AUTHOR
Composed in 1796
A mount, not wearisome and bare and steep,
But a green mountain variously up-piled,
Where o’er the jutting rocks soft mosses creep,
Or colour’d lichens with slow oozing weep;
Where cypress and the darker yew start wild; 5
And, ‘mid the summer torrent’s gentle dash
Dance brighten’d the red clusters of the ash;
Beneath whose boughs, by those still sounds beguil’d,
Calm Pensiveness might muse herself to sleep;
Till haply startled by some fleecy dam, 10
That rustling on the bushy cliff above
With melancholy bleat of anxious love,
Made meek enquiry for her wandering lamb:
Such a green mountain ‘twere most sweet to climb,
E’en while the bosom ach’d with loneliness — 15
How more than sweet, if some dear friend should bless
The adventurous toil, and up the path sublime
Now lead, now follow: the glad landscape round,
Wide and more wide, increasing without bound!
O then ‘twere loveliest sympathy, to mark 20
The berries of the half-uprooted ash
Dripping and bright; and list the torrent’s dash, —
Beneath the cypress, or the yew more dark,
Seated at ease, on some smooth mossy rock;
In social silence now, and now to unlock 25
The treasur’d heart; arm linked in friendly arm,
Save if the one, his muse’s witching charm
Muttering browbent, at unwatch’d distance lag;
Till high o’er head his beckoning friend appears,
And from the forehead of the topmost crag 30
Shouts eagerly: for haply there uprears
That shadowing Pine its old romantic limbs,
Which latest shall detain the enamour’d sight
Seen from below, when eve the valley dims,
Tinged yellow with the rich departing light; 35
And haply, bason’d in some unsunn’d cleft,
A beauteous spring, the rock’s collected tears,
Sleeps shelter’d there, scarce wrinkled by the gale!
Together thus, the world’s vain turmoil left,
Stretch’d on the crag, and shadow’d by the pine, 40
And bending o’er the clear delicious fount,
Ah! dearest youth! it were a lot divine
To cheat our noons in moralising mood,
While west-winds fann’d our temples toil-bedew’d:
Then downwards slope, oft pausing, from the mount, 45
To some lone mansion, in some woody dale,
Where smiling with blue eye, Domestic Bliss
Gives this the Husband’s, that the Brother’s kiss!
Thus rudely vers’d in allegoric lore,
The Hill of Knowledge I essayed to trace; 50
That verdurous hill with many a resting-place,
And many a stream, whose warbling waters pour
To glad, and fertilise the subject plains;
That hill with secret springs, and nooks untrod,
And many a fancy-blest and holy sod 55
Where Inspiration, his diviner strains
Low-murmuring, lay; and starting from the rock’s
Stiff evergreens, (whose spreading foliage mocks
Want’s barren soil, and the bleak frosts of age,
And