beschäftigt. Die letzten neunzehn Jahre seines Lebens verbrachte er zu Highgate, wo er am 25. Juli 1834 starb.

Seine poetischen Werke enthalten: Juvenile Poems, Sibylline Leaves, Odes and Miscellaneous Poems, vermischte, meist lyrische Gedichte: The Rime of the ancient Mariner, ein Balladencyclus: Christabel, ein episch-romantisches Gedicht: Remorse, ein Trauerspiel: Zapolya, ein erzählendes Gedicht: The Fall of Robespierre, ein historisches Drama, eine Uebersetzung von Schillers Wallenstein u. A. m. Eine sehr schöne Ausgabe derselben erschien 1834, in 3 Bänden, London, bei Pickering. Coleridge hat sein Leben selbst geschildert in Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions by S. T. C. London 1817. 2 Bde.

Die ausgezeichnetste Eigenthümlichkeit dieses Dichters ist die Zartheit und Tiefe seiner Empfindungen. Keiner hat wie er die Falten des menschlichen Herzens durchspäht und die Stimme der Natur belauscht; er bezaubert daher durch die Wahrheit seiner Gefühle überall da, wo er sich nicht seiner Phantasie überlässt. Selbst die Unregelmässigkeit und absichtliche Nachlässigkeit der Diction und des Rythmus geben seinen Poesieen einen zauberhaften Reiz, denn aller Orten blickt der echte Genius durch. Hat er sich aber einmal den wilden Träumen seiner Muse hingegeben, so ist kein Halt mehr, wie ein ungezügeltes Ross, das der Reiter nicht zu beherrschen vermag, reisst sie ihn mehr als dass sie ihn trägt durch die Reiche der Phantasie und was er sich auf solchem Zuge aneignet und uns darbringt, streift oft nahe an die Ausgeburten des Wahnsinns. Wenn man seine Gedichte liest, so sollte man glauben, sie rührten von zwei Verfassern her, welche Beide zwar gleich grosse Gaben besitzen, von denen der Eine aber im wildesten Rausche, der Andere dagegen nur in Momenten der tiefsten, ruhigsten Empfindung dichtet und die sich mitunter darin gefallen, gemeinschaftlich an demselben Werke zu arbeiten. — Das hier zuerst mitgetheilte Gedicht Love ist nicht allein Coleridge's schönste Leistung, sondern überhaupt eine der schönsten und zartesten Poesieen, welche die englische Literatur aufzuweisen hat.

And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale In most distressful mood (some inward pain
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates, Had made up that strange thing, an infant's
With fast thick warble, his delicious notes !

dream) As he were fearful that an April night

I hurried with him to our orchard plot, Would be too short for him to utter forth

And he beholds the moon, and hushed at once His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Suspends his sobs, and laughs most silently, Of all its music! and I know a grove

While his fair eyes that swam with undropt Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,

tears
Which the great lord inhabits not: and so Did glitter in the yellow moonbeam! Well
This grove is wild with tangling underwood, It is a father's tale. But if that Heaven
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass, Should give me life, his childhood shall grow up
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths. Familiar with these songs, that with the night
But never elsewhere in one place I knew He may associate joy! Once more farewell,
So many Nightingales: and far and near Sweet Nightingale! once more, my friends, fare-
In wood and thicket over the wide grove

well!
They answer and provoke each other's songs
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, swift jug-jug,
And one low piping sound more sweet than

all

Stirring the air with such an harmony,

Lines, That, should you close your eyes, you might written in the Album at Elbingerode, in almost

the Hartz forest. Forget it was not day.

A most gentle maid I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw Who dwelleth in her hospitable home

Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills, Hard by the castle, and at latest eve

A surging scene, and only limited (Even like a lady vowed and dedicate

By the blue distance. Heavily my way To something more than nature in the grove) Downward I dragg'd through fir - groves ever Glides through the pathways; she knows all

more, their notes,

Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral That gentle maid! and oft, a moment's space,

forms What time the moon was lost behind a cloud, Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard, Hath heard a pause of silence: till the moon The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound; Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly, With one sensation, and those wakeful birds Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct Have all burst forth with choral minstrelsy, From many a note of many a waterfall, As if one quick and sudden gale had swept And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones An hundred airy harps! And she hath watched The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell Many a Nightingale perch giddily

Leap'd frolicsome, or old romantic goat On bloss'my twig still swinging from the breeze, Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on And to that motion tune his wanton song, In low and languid mood: for I had found Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head. That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive

Farewell, 0 warbler! till to-morrow eve, Their finer influence from the life within: And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell! Fair ciphers else: fair, but of import vague We have been loitering long and pleasantly. Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds And now for our dear homes. That strain History or prophecy of friend, or child,

again!

Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe, Or father, or the venerable name
Who, capable of no articulate sound,

Of our adored country! O thou Queen,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,

Thou delegated Deity of Earth, How he would pla his hand beside his ear, O dear, dear England! how my longing eye His little hand, the small forefinger up, Turn'd westward, shaping in the steady clouds And bid us listen! and I deem it wise

Thy sands and high white cliffs ! To make him Nature's playmate. He knows

My native land! well

Fill’d with the thought of thee this heart was The evening star: and once when he awoke

proud,

Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the Float here and there, like things astray,

view

And high o'er head the sky-lark shrills. From sovran Brocken, woods and woody hills, Floated away, like a departing dream,

No voice as yet had made the air Feeble and dim! Stranger, these impulses

Be music with your name; yet why Blame thou not lightly; nor will I profane,

That asking look? that yearning sigh? With hasty judgment or injurious doubt, That man's sublimer spirit, who can feel

That sense of promise every where?

Beloved! flew your spirit by?
That God is every where! the God who framed
Mankind to be one mighty family,
Himself our Father, and the world our home. As when a mother doth explore

The rose-mark on her long-lost child,

I met, I loved you, maiden mild !
As whom I long had loved before

So deeply had I been beguiled.

Henry Hart Milman ward 1791 in London geboren, studirte in Eton und Oxford, ward 1817 Prediger und 1821 Professor der Poesie an der eben genannten Universität, wobei er jedoch sein Pfarramt zu St. Mary in Reading beibehielt, das er gegenwärtig noch verwaltet.

Ausser mehreren grösseren historischen Werken in Prosa schrieb er, einige kleinere lyrische Poesieen abgerechnet, fast nur dramatische Gedichte wie: Fazio; the Fall of Jerusalem; Belshazzar; the Martyr of Antioch, Anna Boleyn u. A. m.

Milman's Dramen sind mit Ausnahme des Fazio für die Aufführung bestimmt, auch herrscht das lyrische Element zu sehr in ihnen vor. Er ist ein Dichter von edler Gesinnung, tiefem Gefühl und hohem Streben, aber zu kalt und besonnen; er sieht sich, wie Lessing von sich sagte, zu sehr bei dem Schaffen zu und gefällt daher durch seine edle, würdige Sprache und seine Besonnenheit, ohne indessen je den Leser mit sich fortzureissen und zu begeistern.

way!

Yet 'twas but love could make me grieve,
Hymn.

And love, you know, 's a reason fair;
When God came down from Heaven the living And much improved, as I believe,

God

The merry heart, that laugh'd at care. What signs and wonders mark'd His stately

So now from idle wishes clear, Brake out inds in music where He trod?

I make the good I may not find: Shone o'er the heavens a brighter, softer day? Adown the stream I gently steer,

And shift my sail with every wind. The dumb began to speak, the blind to see, And half by nature, half by reason, And the lame leap'd, and pain and paleness Can still with pliant heart prepare,

fled;

The mind, attuned to every season,
The mourner's sunken eye grew bright with The merry heart, that laughs at care.

glee,
And from the tomb awoke the wondering dead! Yet, wrap me in your sweetest dream,

Ye social feelings of the mind;
When God went back to Heaven the living Give, sometimes give, your sunny gleam,

God

And let the rest good-humour find. Rode He the Heavens upon a fiery car?

Yes,

let me hail and welcome give Waved seraph-wings along His glorious road?

To every joy my lot may share; Stood still to wonder each bright wandering And pleased and pleasing let me live

star?

With merry heart, that laughs at care.

Upon the cross He hung, and bowed the head,
And pray'd for them that smote, and them

that curst;
And, drop by drop, His slow life blood was shed,

And His last hour of suffering was His worst.

The Love of God.

I.

The merry Heart. I would not from the wise require

The lumber of their learned lore; Nor would I from the rich desire

A single counter of their store.
For I have ease, and I have health,

And I have spirits light as air;
And more than wisdom, more than wealth,

A merry heart, that laughs at care.

Love Thee! oh, Thou, the world's eternal

Sire!
Whose palace is the vast infinity;
Time, space, height, depth, oh, God! are full of

Thee,
And sun-eyed seraphs tremble and admire.
Love Thee! but Thou art girt with vengeful

fire,
And mountains quake, and banded nations flee;
And terror shakes the wide unfathom'd sea,
When the heavens rock with Thy tempestuous ire.
Thou!
too vast for thought to compre-

hend, That wast ere time, shalt be when time is

o'er; Ages and worlds begin

grow old

and

end, Systems and suns Thy changeless throne before, Commence and close their cycles :

I

bend To earth my prostrate soul, and shudder and

adore!

Oh,

Like other mortals of my kind,

I've struggled for dame Fortune's favour;
And sometimes have been half inclined

To rate her for her ill behaviour.
But life was short, - I thought it folly

To lose its moments in despair;
So slipp'd aside from melancholy,

With merry heart, that laugh'd at care.

lost,

And once, 'tis true, two 'witching eyes

Surprised me in a luckless season; Turn'd all my mirth to lonely sighs,

And quite subdued my better reason.