And nowhere did abide;
Softly she was going up,
And a star or two beside.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part iv._
A spring of love gush'd from my heart,
And I bless'd them unaware.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part iv._
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
Beloved from pole to pole.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part v._
A noise like of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part v._
Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a frightful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part vi._
So lonely 't was, that God himself
Scarce seemed there to be.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part vii._
He prayeth well who loveth well
Both man and bird and beast.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part vii._
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part vii._
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
_The Ancient Mariner. Part vii._
And the spring comes slowly up this way.
_Christabel. Part i._
A lady richly clad as she,
Beautiful exceedingly.
_Christabel. Part i._
Carv'd with figures strange and sweet,
All made out of the carver's brain.
_Christabel. Part i._
Her gentle limbs did she undress,
And lay down in her loveliness.
_Christabel. Part i._
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
_Christabel. Part i._
That saints will aid if men will call;
For the blue sky bends over all!
_Christabel. Conclusion to part i._
Each matin bell, the Baron saith,
Knells us back to a world of death.
_Christabel. Part ii._
Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
_Christabel. Part ii._
Alas! they had been friends in youth;
But whispering tongues can poison truth,
And constancy lives in realms above;
And life is thorny, and youth is vain,
And to be wroth with one we love
Doth work like madness in the brain.
_Christabel. Part ii._
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,--
Like cliffs which had been rent asunder:
A dreary sea now flows between.
_Christabel. Part ii._
Perhaps 't is pretty to force together
Thoughts so all unlike each other;
To mutter and mock a broken charm,
To dally with wrong that does no harm.
_Christabel. Conclusion to Part ii._
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.
_Kubla Khan._
Ancestral voices prophesying war.
_Kubla Khan._
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.
_Kubla Khan._
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
_Kubla Khan._
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.
_Epitaph on an Infant._
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare,
And shot my being through earth, sea, and air,
Possessing all things with intensest love,
O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
_France. An Ode. v._
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place
(Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism,
Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
Drops his blue-fring'd lids, and holds them close,
And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven
Cries out, "Where is it?"
_Fears in Solitude._
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin
Is pride that apes humility.[501-1]
_The Devil's Thoughts._
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
_Love._
Blest hour! it was a luxury--to be!
_Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement._
A charm
For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
No sound is dissonant which tells of life.
_This Lime-tree Bower my Prison._
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni._
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni._
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni._
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni._
Earth with her thousand voices praises God.
_Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni._
Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame.
_Ode to Tranquillity._
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.
_Dejection. An Ode. Stanza 1._
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud.
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light.
_Dejection. An Ode. Stanza 5._
A mother is a mother still,
The holiest thing alive.
_The Three Graves._
Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone.
_The Visit of the Gods._ (Imitated from Schiller.)
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn.
_A Christmas Carol. viii._
The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust;
His soul is with the saints, I trust.
_The Knight's Tomb._
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtains that which he merits,
Or any merit that which he obtains.
. . . . . . . . .
Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? Three treasures,--love and light,
And calm thoughts, regular as infants' breath;
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,--
Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
_Complaint. Ed. 1852. The Good Great Man. Ed. 1893._
My eyes make pictures when they are shut.
_A Day-Dream._
To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part,
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart!
_On taking Leave of ----, 1817._
In many ways doth the full heart reveal
The presence of the love it would conceal.
_Motto to Poems written in Later Life._
Nought cared this body for wind or weather
When youth and I lived in 't together.
_Youth and Age._
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like;
Friendship is a sheltering tree;
Oh the joys that came down shower-like,
Of friendship, love, and liberty,
Ere I was old!
_Youth and Age._
I have heard of reasons manifold
Why Love must needs be blind,
But this the best of all I hold,--
His eyes are in his mind.[503-1]
_To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation._
What outward form and feature are
He guesseth but in part;
But what within is good and fair
He seeth with the heart.
_To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation._
Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand,
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.[503-2]
_Fancy in Nubibus._
I counted two-and-seventy stenches,
All well defined, and several stinks.
_Cologne._
The river Rhine, it is well known,
Doth wash your city of Cologne;
But tell me, nymphs! what power divine
Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
_Cologne._
Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows;
Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.
_The Homeric Hexameter._ (Translated from Schiller.)
In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column,
In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
_The Ovidian Elegiac Metre._ (From Schiller.)
I stood in unimaginable trance
And agony that cannot be remembered.
_Remorse. Act iv. Sc. 3._
The intelligible forms of ancient poets,
The fair humanities of old religion,
The power, the beauty, and the majesty
That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain,
Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring,
Or chasms and watery depths,--all these have vanished;
They live no longer in the faith of reason.
_Wallenstein. Part i. Act ii. Sc. 4._ (Translated from Schiller.)
I 've lived and loved.
_Wallenstein. Part i. Act ii. Sc. 6._
Clothing the palpable and familiar
With golden exhalations of the dawn.
_The Death of Wallenstein. Act i. Sc. 1._
Often do the spirits
Of great events stride on before the events,
And in to-day already walks to-morrow.[504-1]
_The Death of Wallenstein. Act v. Sc. 1._
Our myriad-minded Shakespeare.[504-2]
_Biog. Lit. Chap. xv._
A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant's
shoulder to mount on.[504-3]
_The Friend. Sec. i. Essay 8._
An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat
countries, with spire steeples, which, as they cannot be referred
to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and
star.[504-4]
_Ibid., No. 14._
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets,
historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their
talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn
critics.[505-1]
_Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811-1812._
Schiller has the material sublime.
_Table Talk._
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely
definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,--words in their
best order; poetry,--the best words in their best order.
_Table Talk._
That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by
cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of
nonsense.
_Table Talk._
Iago's soliloquy, the motive-hunting of a motiveless
malignity--how awful it is!
_Notes on some other Plays of Shakespeare._
FOOTNOTES:
[498-1] Wordsworth, in his Notes to "We are Seven," claims to have
written this line.
[498-2] Coleridge says: "For these lines I am indebted to Mr.
Wordsworth."
[501-1]
His favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility.
SOUTHEY: _The Devil's Walk._
[503-1] See Shakespeare, page 57.
[503-2]
And Iliad and Odyssey
Rose to the music of the sea.
_Thalatta, p. 133._ (From the German of Stolberg.)
[504-1] Sed ita a principio inchoatum esse mundum ut certis rebus
certa signa præcurrerent (Thus in the beginning the world was so
made that certain signs come before certain events).--CICERO:
_Divinatione, liber i. cap. 52._
Coming events cast their shadows before.--CAMPBELL: _Lochiel's
Warning._
Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the
mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the
present.--SHELLEY: _A Defence of Poetry._
[504-2] "A phrase," says Coleridge, "which I have borrowed from a
Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople."
[504-3] See Burton, page 185.
[504-4] See Wordsworth, page 481.
[505-1] Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid
and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in
despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.--SHELLEY:
_Fragments of Adonais._
You know who critics are? The men who have failed in literature
and art.--DISRAELI: _Lothair, chap. xxxv._
JOSIAH QUINCY. 1772-1864
If this bill [for the admission of Orleans Territory as a State]
passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a
dissolution of the Union; that it will free the States from their
moral obligation; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will
be the duty of some, definitely to prepare for a
separation,--amicably if they can, violently if they must.[505-2]
_Abridged Cong. Debates, Jan. 14, 1811. Vol. iv. p. 327._
FOOTNOTES:
[505-2] The gentleman [Mr. Quincy] cannot have forgotten his own
sentiment, uttered even on the floor of this House, "Peaceably if
we can, forcibly if we must."--HENRY CLAY: _Speech, Jan. 8, 1813._
ROBERT SOUTHEY. 1774-1843.
"You are old, Father William," the young man cried,
"The few locks which are left you are gray;
You are hale, Father William, a hearty old man,--
Now tell me the reason I pray."
_The Old Man's Comforts, and how he gained them._
The march of intellect.[506-1]
_Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society. Vol. ii. p. 360.
The Doctor, Chap. Extraordinary._
The laws are with us, and God on our side.
_On the Rise and Progress of Popular Disaffection_ (1817), _Essay viii.
Vol. ii. p. 107._
Agreed to differ.
_Life of Wesley._
My days among the dead are passed;
Around me I behold,
Where'er these casual eyes are cast,
The mighty minds of old;
My never-failing friends are they,
With whom I converse day by day.
_Occasional Pieces. xxiii._
How does the water
Come down at Lodore?
_The Cataract of Lodore._
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
Through moss and through brake.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-scurry.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
A sight to delight in.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
And so never ending, but always descending.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.
_The Cataract of Lodore._
From his brimstone bed, at break of day,
A-walking the Devil is gone,
To look at his little snug farm of the World,
And see how his stock went on.
_The Devil's Walk. Stanza 1._
He passed a cottage with a double coach-house,--
A cottage of gentility;
And he owned with a grin,
That his favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility.[507-1]
_The Devil's Walk. Stanza 8._
Where Washington hath left
His awful memory
A light for after times!
_Ode written during the War with America, 1814._
How beautiful is night!
A dewy freshness fills the silent air;
No mist obscures; nor cloud, or speck, nor stain,
Breaks the serene of heaven:
In full-orbed glory, yonder moon divine
Rolls through the dark blue depths;
Beneath her steady ray
The desert circle spreads
Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky.
How beautiful is night!
_Thalaba. Book i. Stanza 1._
"But what good came of it at last?"
Quoth little Peterkin.
"Why, that I cannot tell," said he;
"But 't was a famous victory."
_The Battle of Blenheim._
Blue, darkly, deeply, beautifully blue.[507-2]
_Madoc in Wales. Part i. 5._
What will not woman, gentle woman dare,
When strong affection stirs her spirit up?
_Madoc in Wales. Part ii. 2._
And last of all an Admiral came,
A terrible man with a terrible name,--
A name which you all know by sight very well,
But which no one can speak, and no one can spell.
_The March to Moscow. Stanza 8._
They sin who tell us love can die;
With life all other passions fly,
All others are but vanity.
. . . . .
Love is indestructible,
Its holy flame forever burneth;
From heaven it came, to heaven returneth.
. . . . .
It soweth here with toil and care,
But the harvest-time of love is there.
_The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 10._
Oh, when a mother meets on high
The babe she lost in infancy,
Hath she not then for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,
An over-payment of delight?
_The Curse of Kehama. Canto x. Stanza 11._
Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe;
But 't is the happy that have called thee so.
_The Curse of Kehama. Canto xv. Stanza 11._
The Satanic School.
_Vision of Judgment. Original Preface._
FOOTNOTES:
[506-1] See Burke, page 408.
[507-1] See Coleridge, page 501.
[507-2]
"Darkly, deeply, beautifully blue,"
As some one somewhere sings about the sky.
BYRON: _Don Juan, canto iv. stanza 110._
CHARLES LAMB. 1775-1834.
The red-letter days now become, to all intents and purposes,
dead-letter days.
_Oxford in the Vacation._
For with G. D., to be absent from the body is sometimes (not to
speak profanely) to be present with the Lord.
_Oxford in the Vacation._
A clear fire, a clean hearth, and the rigour of the game.
_Mrs. Battle's Opinions on Whist._
Sentimentally I am disposed to harmony; but organically I am
incapable of a tune.
_A Chapter on Ears._
Not if I know myself at all.
_The Old and New Schoolmaster._
It is good to love the unknown.
_Valentine's Day._
The pilasters reaching down were adorned with a glistering
substance (I know not what) under glass (as it seemed),
resembling--a homely fancy, but I judged it to be sugar-candy;
yet to my raised imagination, divested of its homelier qualities,
it appeared a glorified candy.
_My First Play._
Presents, I often say, endear absents.
_A Dissertation upon Roast Pig._
It argues an insensibility.
_A Dissertation upon Roast Pig._
Books which are no books.
_Detached Thoughts on Books._
Your absence of mind we have borne, till your presence of body
came to be called in question by it.
_Amicus Redivivus._
Gone before
To that unknown and silent shore.
_Hester. Stanza 7._
I have had playmates, I have had companions,
In my days of childhood, in my joyful school-days.
All, all are gone, the old familiar faces.
_Old Familiar Faces._
For thy sake, tobacco, I
Would do anything but die.
_A Farewell to Tobacco._
And half had staggered that stout Stagirite.
_Written at Cambridge._
Who first invented work, and bound the free
And holiday-rejoicing spirit down
. . . . . . . . .
To that dry drudgery at the desk's dead wood?
. . . . . . . . .
Sabbathless Satan!
_Work._
I like you and your book, ingenious Hone!
In whose capacious all-embracing leaves
The very marrow of tradition 's shown;
And all that history, much that fiction weaves.
_To the Editor of the Every-Day Book._
He might have proved a useful adjunct, if not an ornament to
society.
_Captain Starkey._
Neat, not gaudy.[510-1]
_Letter to Wordsworth, 1806._
Martin, if dirt was trumps, what hands you would hold!
_Lamb's Suppers._
Returning to town in the stage-coach, which was filled with Mr.
Gilman's guests, we stopped for a minute or two at Kentish Town.
A woman asked the coachman, "Are you full inside?" Upon which
Lamb put his head through the window and said, "I am quite full
inside; that last piece of pudding at Mr. Gilman's did the
business for me."
_Autobiographical Recollections._ (Leslie.)
FOOTNOTES:
[510-1] See Shakespeare, page 130.
JAMES SMITH. 1775-1839.
No Drury Lane for you to-day.
_Rejected Addresses. The Baby's Début._
I saw them go: one horse was blind,
The tails of both hung down behind,
Their shoes were on their feet.
_Rejected Addresses. The Baby's Début._
Lax in their gaiters, laxer in their gait.
_The Theatre._
WILLIAM PITT. ---- -1840.
A strong nor'-wester 's blowing, Bill!
Hark! don't ye hear it roar now?
Lord help 'em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
_The Sailor's Consolation._
My eyes! what tiles and chimney-pots
About their heads are flying!
_The Sailor's Consolation._
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. 1775-1864.
Rose Aylmer, whom these wakeful eyes
May weep, but never see,
A night of memories and of sighs
I consecrate to thee.
_Rose Aylmer._
Wearers of rings and chains!
Pray do not take the pains
To set me right.
In vain my faults ye quote;
I write as others wrote
On Sunium's hight.
_The last Fruit of an old Tree. Epigram cvi._
Shakespeare is not our poet, but the world's,[511-1]--
Therefore on him no speech! And brief for thee,
Browning! Since Chaucer was alive and hale,
No man hath walk'd along our roads with steps
So active, so inquiring eye, or tongue
So varied in discourse.
_To Robert Browning._
The Siren waits thee, singing song for song.
_To Robert Browning._
But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue
Within, and they that lustre have imbibed
In the sun's palace-porch, where when unyoked
His chariot-wheel stands midway in the wave:
Shake one, and it awakens; then apply
Its polisht lips to your attentive ear,
And it remembers its august abodes,
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.[512-1]
_Gebir. Book i._ (1798).
Past are three summers since she first beheld
The ocean; all around the child await
Some exclamation of amazement here.
She coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased,
_Is this the mighty ocean? is this all?_
That wondrous soul Charoba once possest,--
Capacious, then, as earth or heaven could hold,
Soul discontented with capacity,--
Is gone (I fear) forever. Need I say
She was enchanted by the wicked spells
Of Gebir, whom with lust of power inflamed
The western winds have landed on our coast?
I since have watcht her in lone retreat,
Have heard her sigh and soften out the name.[512-2]
_Gebir. Book ii._
I strove with none, for none was worth my strife;
Nature I loved; and next to Nature, Art.
I warm'd both hands against the fire of life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
_Dying Speech of an old Philosopher._
FOOTNOTES:
[511-1]
Nor sequent centuries could hit
Orbit and sum of Shakespeare's wit.
R. W. EMERSON: _May-Day and Other Pieces. Solution._
[512-1] See Wordsworth, page 480.
Poor shell! that Wordsworth so pounded and flattened in his marsh
it no longer had the hoarseness of a sea, but of a
hospital.--LANDOR: _Letter to John Forster._
[512-2] These lines were specially singled out for admiration by
Shelley, Humphrey Davy, Scott, and many remarkable men.--FORSTER:
_Life of Landor, vol. i. p. 95._
THOMAS CAMPBELL. 1777-1844.
'T is distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.[512-3]
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 7._
But Hope, the charmer, linger'd still behind.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 40._
O Heaven! he cried, my bleeding country save!
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 359._
Hope for a season bade the world farewell,
And Freedom shriek'd as Kosciusko fell![513-1]
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 381._
On Prague's proud arch the fires of ruin glow,
His blood-dyed waters murmuring far below.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 385._
And rival all but Shakespeare's name below.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part i. Line 472._
Who hath not own'd, with rapture-smitten frame,
The power of grace, the magic of a name?
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 5._
Without the smile from partial beauty won,
Oh what were man?--a world without a sun.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 21._
The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man the hermit sigh'd--till woman smiled.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 37._
While Memory watches o'er the sad review
Of joys that faded like the morning dew.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 45._
There shall he love when genial morn appears,
Like pensive Beauty smiling in her tears.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 95._
And muse on Nature with a poet's eye.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 98._
That gems the starry girdle of the year.
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 194._
Melt and dispel, ye spectre-doubts, that roll
Cimmerian darkness o'er the parting soul!
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 263._
O star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there,
To waft us home the message of despair?
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 325._
But sad as angels for the good man's sin,
Weep to record, and blush to give it in.[513-2]
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 357._
Cease, every joy, to glimmer on my mind,
But leave, oh leave the light of Hope behind!
What though my winged hours of bliss have been
Like angel visits, few and far between.[514-1]
_Pleasures of Hope. Part ii. Line 375._
The hunter and the deer a shade.[514-2]
_O'Connor's Child. Stanza 5._
Another's sword has laid him low,
Another's and another's;
And every hand that dealt the blow--
Ah me! it was a brother's!
_O'Connor's Child. Stanza 10._
'T is the sunset of life gives me mystical lore,
And coming events cast their shadows before.[514-3]
_Lochiel's Warning._
Shall victor exult, or in death be laid low,
With his back to the field and his feet to the foe,
And leaving in battle no blot on his name,
Look proudly to heaven from the death-bed of fame.
_Lochiel's Warning._
And rustic life and poverty
Grow beautiful beneath his touch.
_Ode to the Memory of Burns._
Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.
_Ode to the Memory of Burns._
Ye mariners of England,
That guard our native seas;
Whose flag has braved, a thousand years,
The battle and the breeze!
_Ye Mariners of England._
Britannia needs no bulwarks,
No towers along the steep;
Her march is o'er the mountain waves,
Her home is on the deep.
_Ye Mariners of England._
When the stormy winds do blow;[515-1]
When the battle rages loud and long,
And the stormy winds do blow.
_Ye Mariners of England._
The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific burn,
Till danger's troubled night depart,
And the star of peace return.
_Ye Mariners of England._
There was silence deep as death,
And the boldest held his breath
For a time.
_Battle of the Baltic._
The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory or the grave!
Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave,
And charge with all thy chivalry!
_Hohenlinden._
Few, few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre.
_Hohenlinden._