SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Frost at Midnight

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

Came loud – and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

1799 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from The Two-Part Prelude of 1799

Was it for this

That one, the fairest of all rivers, loved

To blend his murmurs with my nurse’s song,

And from his alder shades and rocky falls,

And from his fords and shallows, sent a voice

That flowed along my dreams? For this didst thou,

O Derwent, travelling over the green plains

Near my ‘sweet birthplace’, didst thou, beauteous stream,

Make ceaseless music through the night and day,

Which with its steady cadence tempering

Our human waywardness, composed my thoughts

To more than infant softness, giving me

Among the fretful dwellings of mankind

A knowledge, a dim earnest, of the calm

Which nature breathes among the fields and groves?

Beloved Derwent, fairest of all streams,

Was it for this that I, a four years’ child,

A naked boy, among thy silent pools

Made one long bathing of a summer’s day,

Basked in the sun, or plunged into thy streams,

Alternate, all a summer’s day, or coursed

Over the sandy fields, and dashed the flowers

Of yellow groundsel – or, when crag and hill,

The woods, and distant Skiddaw’s lofty height,

Were bronzed with a deep radiance, stood alone

A naked savage in the thunder-shower?

And afterwards (’twas in a later day,

Though early), when upon the mountain-slope

The frost and breath of frosty wind had snapped

The last autumnal crocus, ’twas my joy

To wander half the night among the cliffs

And the smooth hollows where the woodcocks ran

Along the moonlight turf. In thought and wish

That time, my shoulder all with springes hung,

I was a fell destroyer. Gentle powers,

Who give us happiness and call it peace,

When scudding on from snare to snare I plied

My anxious visitation, hurrying on,

Still hurrying, hurrying onward, how my heart

Panted; among the scattered yew-trees and the crags

That looked upon me, how my bosom beat

With expectation! Sometimes strong desire

Resistless overpowered me, and the bird

Which was the captive of another’s toils

Became my prey, and when the deed was done

I heard among the solitary hills

Low breathings coming after me, and sounds

Of undistinguishable motion, steps

Almost as silent as the turf they trod.

Nor less in springtime, when on southern banks

The shining sun had from his knot of leaves

Decoyed the primrose flower, and when the vales

And woods were warm, was I a rover then

In the high places, on the lonesome peaks,

Among the mountains and the winds. Though mean,

And though inglorious, were my views, the end

Was not ignoble. Oh, when I have hung

Above the raven’s nest, by knots of grass

Or half-inch fissures in the slippery rock

But ill sustained, and almost (as it seemed)

Suspended by the blast which blew amain

Shouldering the naked crag, oh, at that time,

While on the perilous ridge I hung alone,

With what strange utterance did the loud dry wind

Blow through my ears! The sky seemed not a sky

Of earth – and with what motion moved the clouds!

The mind of man is fashioned and built up

Even as a strain of music. I believe

That there are spirits which, when they would form

A favoured being, from his very dawn

Of infancy do open out the clouds

As at the touch of lightning, seeking him

With gentle visitation – quiet powers,

Retired, and seldom recognized, yet kind,

And to the very meanest not unknown –

With me, though, rarely in my early days

They communed. Others too there are, who use,

Yet haply aiming at the self-same end,

Severer interventions, ministry

More palpable – and of their school was I.

They guided me: one evening led by them

I went alone into a shepherd’s boat,

A skiff that to a willow-tree was tied

Within a rocky cave, its usual home.

The moon was up, the lake was shining clear

Among the hoary mountains; from the shore

I pushed, and struck the oars, and struck again

In cadence, and my little boat moved on

Just like a man who walks with stately step

Though bent on speed. It was an act of stealth

And troubled pleasure. Not without the voice

Of mountain echoes did my boat move on,

Leaving behind her still on either side

Small circles glittering idly in the moon

Until they melted all into one track

Of sparkling light.

A rocky steep uprose

Above the cavern of the willow-tree,

And now, as suited one who proudly rowed

With his best skill, I fixed a steady view

Upon the top of that same craggy ridge,

The bound of the horizon – for behind

Was nothing but the stars and the grey sky.

She was an elfin pinnace; twenty times

I dipped my oars into the silent lake,

And as I rose upon the stroke my boat

Went heaving through the water like a swan –

When, from behind that rocky steep (till then

The bound of the horizon) a huge cliff,

As if with voluntary power instinct,

Upreared its head. I struck, and struck again,

And, growing still in stature, the huge cliff

Rose up between me and the stars, and still,

With measured motion, like a living thing

Strode after me. With trembling hands I turned

And through the silent water stole my way

Back to the cavern of the willow-tree.

There in her mooring-place I left my bark,

And through the meadows homeward went with grave

And serious thoughts; and after I had seen

That spectacle, for many days my brain

Worked with a dim and undetermined sense

Of unknown modes of being. In my thoughts

There was a darkness – call it solitude,

Or blank desertion. No familiar shapes

Of hourly objects, images of trees,

Of sea or sky, no colours of green fields,

But huge and mighty forms that do not live

Like living men moved slowly through my mind

By day, and were the trouble of my dreams.

(… )

Ere I had seen

Eight summers – and ’twas in the very week

When I was first transplanted to thy vale,

Belovèd Hawkshead, when thy paths, thy shores

And brooks, were like a dream of novelty

To my half-infant mind – I chanced to cross

One of those open fields which, shaped like ears,

Make green peninsulas on Esthwaite’s lake.

Twilight was coming on, yet through the gloom

I saw distinctly on the opposite shore,

Beneath a tree and close by the lake side,

A heap of garments, as if left by one

Who there was bathing. Half an hour I watched

And no one owned them; meanwhile the calm lake

Grew dark with all the shadows on its breast,

And now and then a leaping fish disturbed

The breathless stillness. The succeeding day

There came a company, and in their boat

Sounded with iron hooks and with long poles.

At length the dead man, mid that beauteous scene

Of trees and hills and water, bolt upright

Rose with his ghastly face. I might advert

To numerous accidents in flood or field,

Quarry or moor, or mid the winter snows,

Distresses and disasters, tragic facts

Of rural history that impressed my mind

With images to which in following years

Far other feelings were attached – with forms

That yet exist with independent life,

And, like their archetypes, know no decay.

There are in our existence spots of time

Which with distinct preeminence retain

A fructifying virtue, whence, depressed

By trivial occupations and the round

Of ordinary intercourse, our minds –

Especially the imaginative power –

Are nourished and invisibly repaired;

Such moments chiefly seem to have their date

In our first childhood.

I remember well

(’Tis of an early season that I speak,

The twilight of rememberable life),

While I was yet an urchin, one who scarce

Could hold a bridle, with ambitious hopes

I mounted, and we rode towards the hills.

We were a pair of horsemen: honest James

Was with me, my encourager and guide.

We had not travelled long ere some mischance

Disjoined me from my comrade, and, through fear

Dismounting, down the rough and stony moor

I led my horse, and stumbling on, at length

Came to a bottom where in former times

A man, the murderer of his wife, was hung

In irons. Mouldered was the gibbet-mast;

The bones were gone, the iron and the wood;

Only a long green ridge of turf remained

Whose shape was like a grave. I left the spot,

And reascending the bare slope I saw

A naked pool that lay beneath the hills,

The beacon on the summit, and more near

A girl who bore a pitcher on her head

And seemed with difficult steps to force her way

Against the blowing wind. It was in truth

An ordinary sight, but I should need

Colours and words that are unknown to man

To paint the visionary dreariness

Which, while I looked all round for my lost guide,

Did at that time invest the naked pool,

The beacon on the lonely eminence,

The woman and her garments vexed and tossed

By the strong wind.

(1973)

ROBERT BURNS from Love and Liberty. A Cantata

See the smoking bowl before us,

Mark our jovial, ragged ring!

Round and round take up the Chorus,

And in raptures let us sing –

Chorus –

A fig for those by law protected!

LIBERTY’S a glorious feast!

Courts for Cowards were erected,

Churches built to please the PRIEST.

What is TITLE, what is TREASURE,

What is REPUTATION’S care?

If we lead a life of pleasure,

’Tis no matter HOW or WHERE.

A fig, &c.

With the ready trick and fable

Round we wander all the day;

And at night, in barn or stable,

Hug our doxies on the hay.

A fig for &c.

Does the train-attended CARRIAGE

Thro’ the country lighter rove?

Does the sober bed of MARRIAGE

Witness brighter scenes of love?

A fig for &c.

Life is all a VARIORUM,

We regard not how it goes;

Let them cant about DECORUM,

Who have character to lose.

A fig for &c.

Here ’s to BUDGETS, BAGS and WALLETS!

Here ’s to all the wandering train!

Here ’s our ragged BRATS and CALLETS!

One and all cry out, AMEN!

A fig for those by LAW protected,

LIBERTY’S a glorious feast!

COURTS for Cowards were erected,

CHURCHES built to please the Priest.

(written 1785)

1800 image WILLIAM WORDSWORTH from Lyrical Ballads

A slumber did my spirit seal,

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

No motion has she now, no force

She neither hears nor sees

Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course

With rocks and stones and trees!

Song

She dwelt among th’ untrodden ways

Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

And very few to love.

A Violet by a mossy stone

Half-hidden from the Eye!

– Fair, as a star when only one

Is shining in the sky!

She lived unknown, and few could know

When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her Grave, and Oh!

The difference to me.

 
image

ROBERT BURNS 1801

Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,

On yonder lea, on yonder lea;

My plaidie to the angry airt,

I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee:

5

Or did misfortune’s bitter storms

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,

Thy bield should be my bosom,

To share it a’, to share it a’.

 

Or were I in the wildest waste,

10

Sae black and bare, sae black and bare,

The desart were a paradise,

If thou wert there, if thou wert there.

Or were I monarch o’ the globe,

Wi’ thee to reign, wi’ thee to reign;

15

The brightest jewel in my crown,

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen.

ROBERT BURNS The Fornicator. A New Song

Ye jovial boys who love the joys,

The blissful joys of Lovers;

Yet dare avow with dauntless brow,

When th’ bony lass discovers;

5

I pray draw near and lend an ear,

And welcome in a Frater,

For I’ve lately been on quarantine,

A proven Fornicator.

 

Before the Congregation wide

10

I pass’d the muster fairly,

My handsome Betsey by my side,

We gat our ditty rarely;

But my downcast eye by chance did spy

What made my lips to water,

15

Those limbs so clean where I, between,

Commenc’d a Fornicator.

 

With rueful face and signs of grace

I pay’d the buttock-hire,

The night was dark and thro’ the park

20

I could not but convoy her;

A parting kiss, what could I less,

My vows began to scatter,

My Betsey fell – lal de dal lal lal,

I am a Fornicator.

 

25

But for her sake this vow I make,

And solemnly I swear it,

That while I own a single crown,

She’s welcome for to share it;

And my roguish boy his Mother’s joy,

30

And the darling of his Pater,

For him I boast my pains and cost,

Although a Fornicator.

 

Ye wenching blades whose hireling jades

Have tipt you off blue-boram,

35

I tell ye plain, I do disdain

To rank you in the Quorum;

But a bony lass upon the grass

To teach her esse Mater,

And no reward but for regard,

40

O that’s a Fornicator.

 

Your warlike Kings and Heros bold,

Great Captains and Commanders;

Your mighty Cèsars fam’d of old,

And Conquering Alexanders;

45

In fields they fought and laurels bought

And bulwarks strong did batter,

But still they grac’d our noble list

And ranked Fornicator!!!

(written 1785)

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Dejection. An Ode, 1802 Written April 4, 1802

‘Late, late yestreen I saw the New Moon,

With the Old Moon in her arms;

And I fear, I fear, my master dear,

We shall have a deadly storm.’

Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence

Well! if the Bard was weather-wise, who made

The grand Old Ballad of Sir PATRICK SPENCE,

This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence

Unrous’d by winds, that ply a busier trade

Than those, which mould yon clouds in lazy flakes,

Or this dull sobbing draft, that drones and rakes

Upon the strings of this Œolian lute,

Which better far were mute.

For lo! the New Moon, winter-bright!

And overspread with phantom light,

(With swimming phantom light o’erspread,

But rimm’d and circled by a silver thread)

I see the Old Moon in her lap, foretelling

The coming on of rain and squally blast:

And O! that even now the gust were swelling,

And the slant night-show’r driving loud and fast!

Those sounds which oft have rais’d me, while they aw’d,

And sent my soul abroad,

Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,

Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!

II

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassion’d grief,

Which finds no nat’ral outlet, no relief

In word, or sigh, or tear –

O EDMUND! in this wan and heartless mood,

To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,

Have I been gazing on the Western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow-green:

And still I gaze – and with how blank an eye!

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,

That give away their motion to the stars;

Those stars, that glide behind them, or between,

Now sparkling, now bedimm’d, but always seen;

Yon crescent moon, as fix’d as if it grew,

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue,

A boat becalm’d! a lovely sky-canoe!

I see them all, so excellently fair –

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

III

My genial spirits fail,

And what can these avail,

To lift the smoth’ring weight from off my breast!

It were a vain endeavour,

Tho’ 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!

IV

O EDMUND! we receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does Nature live:

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!

And would we aught behold, of higher worth,

Than that inanimate cold world, allow’d

To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,

Ah from the soul itself must issue forth,

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the earth –

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element!

O pure of heart! Thou need’st not ask of me

What this strong music in the soul may be?

What, and wherein it doth exist,

This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,

This beautiful and beauty-making pow’r?

JOY, virtuous EDMUND! joy, that ne’er was given,

Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,

Joy, EDMUND! is the spirit and the pow’r,

Which wedding Nature to us gives in dow’r

A new earth and new Heaven,

Undream’d of by the sensual and the proud –

JOY is the sweet voice, JOY the luminous cloud –

We, we 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.

V

Yes, dearest EDMUND, yes!

There was a time when, tho’ my path was rough,

This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence fancy made me dreams of happiness:

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,

And fruits and foliage, not my own, seem’d mine.

But now afflictions bow me down to earth:

Nor care I, that they rob me of my mirth,

But O! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,

My shaping spirit of imagination.

[The sixth and seventh Stanzas omitted.]1

*      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *

*      *      *      *      *      *

VIII

O wherefore did I let it haunt my mind,

This dark distressful dream?

I turn from it and listen to the wind

Which long has rav’d unnotic’d. What a scream

Of agony, by torture, lengthen’d out,

That lute sent forth! O wind, that rav’st without,

Bare crag, or mountain tairn, or blasted tree,

Or pine-grove, whither woodman never clomb,

Or lonely house, long held the witches’ home,

Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,

Mad Lutanist! who, in this month of show’rs,

Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flow’rs,

Mak’st devil’s yule, with worse than wintry song,

The blossoms, buds, and tim’rous leaves among.

Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!

Thou mighty Poet, ev’n to frenzy bold!

What tell’st thou now about?

’Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,

With many groans of men with smarting wounds –

At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!

But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!

And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd,

With groans and tremulous shudderings – all is over!

It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud –

A tale of less affright,

And temper’d with delight,

As EDMUND’s self had fram’d the tender lay –

’Tis of a little child,

Upon a lonesome wild,

Not far from home; but she has lost her way –

And now moans low, in utter grief and fear;

And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear!

IX

’Tis midnight, and small thoughts have I of sleep;

Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!

Visit him, gentle Sleep, with wings of healing,

And may this storm be but a mountain birth,

May all the stars hang bright above his dwelling,

Silent, as tho’ they watch’d the sleeping earth!

With light heart may he rise,

Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,

And sing his lofty song, and teach me to rejoice!

O EDMUND, friend of my devoutest choice,

O rais’d from anxious dread and busy care,

By the immenseness of the good and fair

Which thou see’st ev’ry where

Joy lifts thy spirit, joy attunes thy voice,

To thee do all things live from pole to pole,

Their life the eddying of thy living soul!

O simple spirit, guided from above,

O lofty Poet, full of light and love,

Brother and friend of my devoutest choice,

Thus may’st thou ever evermore rejoice!

image SIR WALTER SCOTT (editor) from Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border

ANONYMOUS The Wife of Usher’s Well

There lived a wife at Usher’s Well,

And a wealthy wife was she;

She had three stout and stalwart sons,

And sent them oer the sea.

 

5

They hadna been a week from her,

A week but barely ane,

Whan word came to the carline wife

That her three sons were gane.

 

They hadna been a week from her,

10

A week but barely three,

Whan word came to the carlin wife

That her sons she’d never see.

 

‘I wish the wind may never cease,

Nor fashes in the flood,

15

Till my three sons come hame to me,

In earthly flesh and blood.’

 

It fell about the Martinmass,

When nights are lang and mirk,

The carlin wife’s three sons came hame,

20

And their hats were o the birk.

 

It neither grew in syke nor ditch,

Nor yet in ony sheugh;

But at the gates o Paradise,

That birk grew fair eneugh.

 

*      *      *      *      *      *

25

‘Blow up the fire, my maidens,

Bring water from the well;

For a’ my house shall feast this night,

Since my three sons are well.’

 

And she has made to them a bed,

30

She’s made it large and wide,

And she’s taen her mantle her about,

Sat down at the bed-side.

 

*      *      *      *      *      *

Up then crew the red, red cock,

And up then crew the gray;

35

The eldest to the youngest said,

‘T is time we were away.

 

The cock he hadna crawd but once,

And clappd his wings at a’,

40

When the youngest to the eldest said,

Brother, we must awa.

 

‘The cock doth craw, the day doth daw,

The channerin’ worm doth chide;

Gin we be mist out o our place,

A sair pain we maun bide.

 

45

‘Fare ye weel, my mother dear!

Fareweel to barn and byre!

And fare ye weel, the bonny lass

That kindles my mother’s fire!’