The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Poems, Plays, Essays, Lectures, Autobiography & Personal Letters (Illustrated). Samuel Taylor Coleridge
of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm which accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset diffused over a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability of combining both. These are the poetry of nature." He had no greater pleasure possible than to steep himself in "the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us: an inexhaustible treasure," he proclaimed, "but for which, in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solitude, we have eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not and hearts that neither feel nor understand." And when his imagination craved some wilder and more romantic outlook than the peaceful village where,
beside one friend,
Beneath the impervious covert of one oak,
I've raised a lowly shed, and know the names
Of Husband and of Father,—
that imagination could at will supply its wants. His eyes could "make pictures when they are shut," and could carry him momentarily, as on some magic carpet, to a dreamland beyond the limitations of mortal experience. The same exquisite and meticulous perception which enabled Coleridge to realize and remember the double sound of rain, the "quiet sounds from hidden rills," among the heather, the slanting shower of blossoms on the "faint gale of departing May,"—revealed to him how
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 there 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!
· · · · · · · Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Such, in fact, was the dual capacity of Coleridge's mind,—such its ability to commingle the actual and the imaginary, that whilst he could at one moment paint the gentle English landscape in which he dwelt,—
Low was our pretty Cot; our tallest Rose
Peeped at the chamber-window. We could hear
At silent noon, and eve, and early morn,
The Sea's faint murmur. In the open air
Our Myrtles blossom'd; and across the Porch
Thick Jasmins twin'd: the little landscape round,
Was green and woody, and refresh'd the eye.
It was a spot which you might aptly call
The Valley of Seclusion!
he was enabled to describe, with the verisimilitude of perfect memory, the dim sea-reaches where,—
... Now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken—
The ice was all between.
The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!
At length did cross an Albatross,—
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name.
It ate the food it ne'er had eat,
And round and round it flew.
The ice did split with a thunder-fit;
The helmsman steered us through!
But now, while the sun poured down hotter and still hotter rays upon the unaccustomed back of Coleridge, he heard the hearty voice of Tom Poole, summoning him to the bark-built arbour under the big elm-trees. A jug of egg-flip and a delightful chat were awaiting him: the bees were humming round in the "lime-tree bower" of the garden: and the deep, vibrating voice of the poet, roused to unwonted exhilaration, was presently moved to declaim one of his own magnificent imitations from Schiller, The Visit of the Gods. His recitation rose like a chant in its music and sonority.
Never, believe me,
Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:
Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,
Iacchus! but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler;
Lo! Phoebus the Glorious descends from his Throne!
They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!
With Divinities fills my
Terrestrial Hall!
How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,
Celestial Quire?
Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance
Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,
That the roofs of Olympus may echo my lyre!
Ha! we mount! on their pinions they waft up my soul!
O give me the Nectar!
O fill me the Bowl!
THE ALBATROSS BREAKS THE ICE-SPELL.
"At length did cross an Albatross,—
Through the fog it came;
As if it had been a Christian soul,
We hailed it in God's name."
(The Ancient Mariner).
"Indeed, one might easily forget all mundane matters upon a day like this," mused the poet as he became rested and refreshed. "It is not a day for doing, Poole,—for digging and forking and stooping,—it was meant for dreaming, for endless reveries of eternal beauty."
"That is not likely ever to be my lot," said the matter-of-fact Poole, "Too much to see after."
"It might be mine, perhaps, did I choose...." observed Coleridge, with the abstracted air of one talking in his sleep, "Have I ever told you, Poole, of the offer I have had from the Wedgwood brothers?"
"The china-man's sons?" Poole queried.
"The same," said Coleridge. "They have offered me an annuity for life, of £140 a year, to prevent my being obliged to abandon poetry and philosophy, as I must do if I take up preaching professionally."
"It is a vastly fine offer!" exclaimed