As water-lilies ripple thy slow stream! Dear native haunts! where Virtue still is gay,

Where Friendship's fixed star sheds a mellowed ray,

Where Love a crown of thornless Roses wears,

Where soften'd Sorrow smiles within her tears;

And Memory, with a Vestal's chaste employ,

Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of joy!

No more your sky-larks melting from the sight

Shall thrill the attuned heart-string with delight

No more shall deck your pensive Pleasures sweet

With wreaths of sober hue my evening

seat.

Yet dear to Fancy's eye your varied

scene

Of wood, hill, dale, and sparkling brook between!

Yet sweet to Fancy's ear the warbled song,

That soars on Morning's wing your vales

among.

Scenes of my Hope! the aching eye ye leave

Like yon bright hues that paint the clouds of eve!

Tearful and saddening with the saddened blaze

Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful

gaze:

Sees shades on shades with deeper tint

impend,

Till chill and damp the moonless night descend. 1793. 1796.

LEWTI

OR THE CIRCASSIAN LOVE-CHANT

AT midnight by the stream I roved,
To forget the form I loved.
Image of Lewti! from my mind
Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

The Moon was high, the moonlight gleam

And the shadow of a star Heaved upon Tamaha's stream:

But the rock shone brighter far,

The rock half sheltered from my view By pendent boughs of tressy yew.—

So shines my Lewti's forehead fair, Gleaming through her sable hair, Image of Lewti! from my mind Depart; for Lewti is not kind.

I saw a cloud of palest hue,

Onward to the moon it passed;
Still brighter and more bright it grew,
With floating colors not a few,

Till it reach'd the moon at last :
Then the cloud was wholly bright,
With a rich and amber light!
And so with many a hope I seek

And with such joy I find my Lewti; And even so my pale wan cheek

Drinks in as deep a flush of beauty! Nay, treacherous image! leave my mind,

If Lewti never will be kind.

The little cloud-it floats away,

Away it goes; away so soon?
Alas! it has no power to stay:
Its hues are dim, its hues are gray
Away it passes from the moon!
How mournfully it seems to fly,

Ever fading more and more,
To joyless regions of the sky-
And now 'tis whiter than before!
As white as my poor cheek will be,
When, Lewti! on my couch I lie,
A dying man for love of thee.
Nay, treacherous image! leave my

mind

O beauteous birds! 'tis such a pleasure

To see you move beneath the moon,
I would it were your true delight
To sleep by day and wake all night.

I know the place where Lewti lies
When silent night has closed her eyes:
It is a breezy jasmine-bower,
The nightingale sings o'er her head:

Voice of the Night! had I the power
That leafy labyrinth to thread,
And creep, like thee, with soundless
tread,

I then might view her bosom white
Heaving lovely to my sight,

As these two swans together heave
On the gently-swelling wave.

Oh! that she saw me in a dream,

And dreamt that I had died for care; All pale and wasted I would seem Yet fair withal, as spirits are! I'd die indeed, if I might see Her bosom heave, and heave for me! Soothe, gentle image! soothe my mind! To-morrow Lewti may be kind. 1794. April 13, 1798.

Thy jasmine and thy window-peeping

rose,

And myrtles fearless of the mild sea-air. And I shall sigh fond wishes-sweet abode!

Ah-had none greater! And that all had such!

It might be so-but the time is not yet. Speed it, O Father! Let thy Kingdom come! 1795. October, 1796.

TIME REAL AND IMAGINARY

AN ALLEGORY

ON the wide level of a mountain's head, (I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)

Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,

Two lovely children run an endless race, A sister and a brother!

This far outstript the other; Yet ever runs she with reverted face, And looks and listens for the boy behind:

For he, alas! is blind!

O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,

And knows not whether he be first o last. ?1... 1817.

THIS LIME-TREE BOWER MY

PRISON

ADDRESSED TO CHARLES LAMB, OF THE INDIA HOUSE, LONDON

In the June of 1797 some long-expected friends paid a visit to the author's cottage; and on the morning of their arrival, he met with an accident, which disabled him from walking during the whole time of their stay. One evening, when they had left him for a few hours, he composed the following lines in the gardenbower. (Coleridge.)

WELL, they are gone, and here must I remain,

This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost

Beauties and feelings, such as would have been

Most sweet to my remembrance even when age

Included by Coleridge among his "Juvenile Poems." There is no other evidence to indicate at what date it was written. See, however, a manuscript note of 1811 on the same subject, given in Anima Poetae at the beginning of Chapter VIII.

And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend

Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,

Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round

On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth

seem

Less gross than bodily; and of such hues

As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes Spirits perceive his presence.

A delight Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad

As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,

This little lime-tree bower, have I not marked

Much that has soothed me. Pale beneath the blaze

Hung the transparent foliage; and 1 watched

Some broad and sunny leaf, and loved to

see

The shadow of the leaf and stem above, Dappling its sunshine! And that wal

nut-tree

Was richly tinged, and a deep radiance lay

Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass

Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue

Through the late twilight: and though now the bat

Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,

Yet still the solitary humble-bee Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know

That Nature ne'er deserts the wise and pure;

No plot so narrow, be but Nature there. No waste so vacant, but may well employ

Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart

Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes

"Tis well to be bereft of promised good, That we may lift the soul, and contemplate

With lively joy the joys we cannot share.

My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook

Beat its straight path along the dusky air

Homewards, I blest it! deeming, its black wing

(Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)

Had cross'd the mighty orb's dilated glory,

While thou stood'st gazing; or when all was still,

Flew creeking o'er thy head, and had a charm

For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom

No sound is dissonant which tells of Life. 1797. 1800.

KUBLA KHAN

In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farmhouse between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's" Pilgrimage": "Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall." The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the corre spondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awaking he ap peared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away, like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter.

Then all the charm Is broken-all that phantom-world so fair Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread, And each mis-shapes the other. Stay awhile, Poor youth who scarcely dar'st lift up thine

mind, the Author has frequently purposed to finish for himself what had been originally, as it were, given to him. Aupiov ädiov aσw, but the to-morrow is yet to come. (Coleridge's note, 1816.)

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.

So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round:

And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills,

Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted

Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!

A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted

By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,

As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,

A mighty fountain momently was forced :

Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding