O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been Alone on a wide wide sea: So lonely 'twas, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be. O sweeter than the marriage-feast, To walk together to the kirk To walk together to the kirk, While each to his great Father bends, Old men, and babes, and loving friends, He prayeth best, who loveth best The Mariner, whose eye is bright, Is gone and now the Wedding-Guest He went like one that hath been stunned, And is of sense forlorn : 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And hark, again! the crowing cock, Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff, which From her kennel beneath the rock Maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Is the night chilly and dark? The lovely lady, Christabel, Whom her father loves so well, What makes her in the wood so late, A furlong from the castle gate? And she in the midnight wood will pray For the weal of her lover that's far away. She stole along, she nothing spoke, The sighs she heaved were soft and low, The lady sprang up suddenly, The lovely lady, Christabel! It moaned as near, as near can be, But what it is, she cannot tell.- Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. She folded her arms beneath her cloak, What sees she there? There she sees a damsel bright, That shadowy in the moonlight shone : I guess, 'twas frightful there to see They crossed the moat, and Christabel Took the key that fitted well; A little door she opened straight, All in the middle of the gate; The gate that was ironed within and without, Where an army in battle-array had marched out The lady sank, belike through pain, And Christabel with might and main And moved, as she were not in pain. So free from danger, free from fear, They crossed the court: right glad they were. And Christabel devoutly cried To the lady by her side, Praise we the Virgin all divine Who hath rescued thee from thy distress! Alas, alas! said Geraldine, I cannot speak for weariness. So free from danger, free from fear, They crossed the court: right glad they were. They passed the hall, that echoes still, Pass as lightly as you will! The brands were flat, the brands were dying, Amid their own white ashes lying; But when the lady passed, there came A tongue of light, a fit of flame; Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline tall, Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare, They steal their way from stair to stair, And now have reached her chamber door; The moon shines dim in the open air, Is fastened to an angel's feet. The silver lamp burns dead and dim; But Christabel the lamp will trim. She trimmed the lamp, and made it bright, The Nightingale. (Part I., 1798.) No cloud, no relique of the sunken day ... My Friend, and thou, our Sister! we have learnt A different lore: we may not thus profane Nature's sweet voices, always full of love And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music! And I know a grove Of large extent, hard by a castle huge, Which the great lord inhabits not; and so And one low piping sound more sweet than all— That should you close your eyes, you might almost Farewell, O Warbler! till to-morrow eve, (A Conversation Poem,' April 1798.) Frost at Midnight. Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the interspersed vacancies And momentary pauses of the thought! (To Hartley Coleridge, 1798.) From 'Dejection: an Ode.' My genial spirits fail; And what can these avail To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever On that green light that lingers in the west : I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. O Lady! we receive but what we give, A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the Earth And from the soul itself must there be sent O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given, Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower, Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud- And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, There was a time when, though my path was rough, Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness: With Nature, Hope, and Poesy, When I was young! When I was young ?-Ah, woeful when ! Ah for the Change 'twixt Now and Then! This breathing House not built with hands, This body that does me grievous wrong, O'er aery Cliffs and glittering Sands, How lightly then it flashed along: Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, On winding Lakes and Rivers wide, That ask no aid of Sail or Oar, That fear no spite of Wind or Tide ! Nought cared this Body for wind or weather When Youth and I lived in 't together. : Flowers are lovely; Love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; O the Joys, that came down shower-like, Of Friendship, Love, and Liberty, Ere I was old! Ere I was old? Ah woeful Ere, It cannot be, that Thou art gone! It is recorded in the shuddering hearts of Christians that... every Bishop but one voted for the continuance of the war [with France]. They deemed the fate of their Religion to be involved in the contest !-Not the Religion of Peace, my Brethren; not the Religion of the meek and lowly Jesus, which forbids to his Disciples all alliance with the powers of this Worldbut the Religion of Mitres and Mysteries, the Religion of Pluralities and Persecution, the Eighteen-ThousandPound-a-Year Religion of Episcopacy. . . . Alas! what room would there be for Bishops or for Priests in a Religion where Deity is the only object of Reverence, and our Immortality the only article of Faith-Immortality made probable to us by the Light of Nature, and proved to us by the Resurrection of Jesus. Him the High Priests crucified, but he has left us a Religion, which shall prove fatal to every High Priest-a Religion, of which every true Christian is the Priest, his own Heart the Altar, the Universe its Temple, and Errors and Vices its only Sacrifices. Ride on, mighty Jesus! because of thy words of Truth, of Love, and Equality! The age of Priesthood will soon be no more-that of Philosophers and Christians will succeed, and the torch of Superstition be extinguished for ever. (From 'Conciones ad Populum,' of 1795, in Essays on His Own Times, 1850.) The Union with Ireland. On the general policy of this measure [the Act of Union of Great Britain with Ireland] we have never ventured an opinion: though the means which have been adopted to carry it into effect have received from us all the abhorrence which we could express! (For no safe expression could convey all which we felt and still feel.) The vindictive turbulence of a wild and barbarous race, brutalised by the oppression of centuries, was to be coerced; and no better expedient suggested itself than to permit, or at best to connive at, a system of retaliation! To give an example of horrors, under the pretext that they were only following one; by the vices of a government, to occasion the vices of popular rage, and by retaliations, to inflame that rage into madness; to iron and strait-waistcoat the whole country by military law, and then gravely entreat the inhabitants to exercise their free will and unbiassed judgments; these were the measures intended to smooth and prepare the way to a great national union, founded in assent and cemented by affection! However wise and benignant the plan might have been in itself, it certainly becomes questionable whether it may not be unsafe and impolitic at present, in consequence of the agitation produced by the mad and sanguinary precurrences. This consideration has doubtless influenced many in their opposition to it; while others have found their national pride attacked and stabbed in the vitals by the idea that their country was to lose its individual being and character, and without heart or lungs of its own, to be fed, like a wen, by the circuitous circulation of a nobler body. Yet still, when we contemplate the materials of which the Orange Confederacy is composed, we experience some degree of surprise at the strength and obstinacy of their opposition. A virtuous opposition it cannot be ! We know that faction too well. With them public depravity is not softened down even by the hopeful vice of hypocrisy :general sympathy in corruption supersedes the necessity of a vizard. Jobbers, place-hunters, unconditional hirelings, whatever their immediate conduct may be, they will gain no credit from honest men for their motives. Desperate state-harpies, they are now opening against ministers the ravenous mouths, that had been even now devouring ministerial bounties; and presume to fight for their country with talons impeded by their country's spoils, polluted by their country's blood! Timeo Danaos vel dona ferentes. These men recall to our mind the fable of the magician, who, having ordered his ministering imps to destroy the infernal abodes, was himself torn in pieces by them, and carried off in a whirlwind. (Contributed 15th January 1800 to the Morning Post; reprinted in Essays on His Own Times, 1850.) Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. There are truths so self-evident, or so immediately and palpably deduced from those that are, or are acknowledged for such, that they are at once intelligible to all men who possess the common advantages of the social state; although by sophistry, by evil habits, by the neglect, false persuasions, and impostures of an anti-Christian priesthood joined in one conspiracy with the violence of tyrannical governors, the understandings of men may become so darkened and their consciences so lethargic that a necessity will arise for the republication of these truths, and this too with a voice of loud alarm and impassioned warning. Such were the doctrines proclaimed by the first Christians to the Pagan world; such were the lightnings flashed by Wickliff, Huss, Luther, Calvin, Zuinglius, Latimer, and others across the Papal darkness; and such in our own times the agitating truths with which Thomas Clarkson and his excellent confederates, the Quakers, fought and conquered the legalised banditti of men-stealers, the numerous and powerful perpetrators and advocates of rapine, murder, and (of blacker guilt than either) slavery. Truths of this kind being indispensable to man, considered as a moral being, are above all expedience, all accidental consequences; for as sure as God is holy, and man immortal, there can be no evil so great as the ignorance or disregard of them. It is the very madness of mock prudence to oppose the removal of a poisoned dish on account of the pleasant sauces or nutritious viands which would be lost with it! . . . The sole condition, therefore, imposed on us by the law of conscience in these cases is, that we employ no unworthy and heterogeneous means to realise the necessary end, -that we entrust the event wholly to the full and adequate promulgation of the truth, and to those generous affections which the constitution of our moral nature has linked to the full perception of it. Yet evil may, nay it will, be occasioned. Weak men may take offence, and wicked men avail themselves of it; though we must not attribute to the promulgation, or to the truth promulgated, all the evil of which wicked men -predetermined, like the wolf in the fable, to create some occasion-may choose to make it the pretext. But that there ever was, or ever can be, a preponderance of evil, I defy either the historian to instance or the philosopher to prove. 'Let it fly away, all that chaff of light faith that can fly off at any breath of temptation; the cleaner will the true grain be stored up in the granary of the Lord,' we are entitled to say with Tertullian; and to exclaim with heroic Luther, Scandal and offence! Talk not to me of scandal and offence. Need breaks through stone walls, and recks not of scandal. It is my duty to spare weak consciences as far as it may be done without hazard of my soul. Where not, I must take counsel for my soul, though half or the whole world should be scandalised thereby.' Luther felt and preached and wrote and acted as beseemed a Luther to feel and utter and act. The truths which had been outraged he re-proclaimed in the spirit of outraged truth, at the behest of his conscience and in the service of the God of truth. He did his duty, come good, come evil! and made no question on which side the preponderance would be. In the one scale there was gold, and impressed thereon the image and superscription of the universal Sovereign. In all the wide and ever-widening commerce of mind with mind throughout the world, it is treason to refuse it. Can this have a counter weight? The other scale indeed might have seemed full up to the very balance-yard; but of what worth and substance were its contents? ... |