The Literary Remains of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume I Part 33

FOR THE HYMN ON THE SUN.

--The sun (for now his...o...b..'Gan slowly sink)-- Shot half his rays aslant the heath, whose flow'rs Purpled the mountain's broad and level top.

Rich was his bed of clouds, and wide beneath

FOR THE HYMN ON THE MOON.

In a cave in the mountains of Cashmeer there is an image of ice, which makes its appearance thus: Two days before the new moon there appears a bubble of ice, which increases in size every day till the fifteenth, by which time it is an ell or more in height;--then as the moon wanes, the image decreases till it vanishes away.

In darkness I remain'd;-the neighb'ring clock Told me that now the rising sun at dawn Shone lovely on my garden.

These be staggerers that, made drunk by power, Forget thirst's eager promise, and presume, Dark dreamers! that the world forgets it too!

--Perish warmth, Unfaithful to its seeming!

Old age, 'the shape and messenger of death,'

His wither'd fist still knocking at death's door.

--G.o.d no distance knows All of the whole possessing.

With skill that never alchemist yet told, Made drossy lead as ductile as pure gold.

Guess at the wound and heal with secret hand.

The broad-breasted rock Gla.s.ses his rugged forehead in the sea.

I mix in life, and labour to seem free, With common persons pleas'd and common things, While every thought and action tends to thee, And every impulse from thy influence springs.

FAREWELL TO LOVE.

[*] Farewell, sweet Love! yet blame you not my truth; More fondly ne'er did mother eye her child Than I your form: your's were my hopes of youth, And as you shaped my thoughts, I sigh'd or smil'd.

While most were wooing wealth, or gaily swerving To pleasure's secret haunt, and some apart Stood strong in pride, self-conscious of deserving, To you I gave my whole weak wis.h.i.+ng heart; And when I met the maid that realized Your fair creations, and had won her kindness, Say but for her if aught on earth I prized!

Your dreams alone I dreamt and caught your blindness.

O grief!--but farewell, Love! I will go play me With thoughts that please me less, and less betray me.

[*] Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad-- Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky-- How warm, how still! Tho' tears should dim mine eye, Yet will my heart for days continue glad, For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!

Each crime that once estranges from the virtues Doth make the memory of their features daily More dim and vague, till each coa.r.s.e counterfeit Can have the pa.s.sport to our confidence Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd, Who prize and seek the honest man but as A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.

Grant me a patron, gracious Heaven! whene'er My unwash'd follies call for penance drear: But when more hideous guilt this heart infects, Instead of fiery coals upon my pate, O let a t.i.tled patron be my fate;-- That fierce compendium of Egyptian pests!

Right reverend dean, right honourable squire, Lord, marquis, earl, duke, prince,--or if aught higher, However proudly nicknamed, he shall be Anathema Maranatha to me!

A SOBER STATEMENT OF HUMAN LIFE,

OR THE TRUE MEDIUM.

[*] A chance may win what by mischance was lost; The net that holds not great, takes little fish: In somethings all, in all things none are crost; Few all they need, but none have all they wish: Unmingled joys to no one here befall; Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!

OMNIANA. 1812

THE FRENCH DECADE.

I have nothing to say in defence of the French revolutionists, as far as they are personally concerned in this subst.i.tution of every tenth for the seventh day as a day of rest. It was not only a senseless outrage on an ancient observance, around which a thousand good and gentle feelings had cl.u.s.tered; it not only tended to weaken the bond of brotherhood between France and the other members of Christendom; but it was dishonest, and robbed the labourer of fifteen days of restorative and humanizing repose in every year, and extended the wrong to all the friends and fellow labourers of man in the brute creation. Yet when I hear Protestants, and even those of the Lutheran persuasion, and members of the church of England, inveigh against this change as a blasphemous contempt of the fourth commandment, I pause, and before I can a.s.sent to the verdict of condemnation, I must prepare my mind to include in the same sentence, at least as far as theory goes, the names of several among the most revered reformers of Christianity. Without referring to Luther, I will begin with Master Frith, a founder and martyr of the church of England, having witnessed his faith amid the flames in the year 1533. This meek and enlightened, no less than zealous and orthodox, divine, in his "Declaration of Baptism" thus expresses himself:

Our forefathers, which were in the beginning of the Church, did abrogate the sabbath, to the intent that men might have an example of Christian liberty. Howbeit, because it was necessary that a day should be reserved in which the people should come together to hear the word of G.o.d, they ordained instead of the Sabbath, which was Sat.u.r.day, the next following which is Sunday. And although they might have kept the Sat.u.r.day with the Jew as a thing indifferent, yet they did much better.

Some three years after the martyrdom of Frith, in 1536, being the 27th of Henry VIII. suffered Master Tindal in the same glorious cause, and this ill.u.s.trious martyr and translator of the word of life, likewise, in his "Answer to Sir Thomas More," hath similarly resolved this point:

As for the Sabbath, we be lords of the Sabbath, and may yet change it into Monday, or any other day, as we see need; or we may make every tenth day holy day only, if we see cause why. Neither was there any cause to change it from the Sat.u.r.day, save only to put a difference between us and the Jews; neither need we any holy day at all, if the people might be taught without it.

This great man believed that if Christian nations should ever become Christians indeed, there would every day be so many hours taken from the labour for the perishable body, to the service of the souls and the understandings of mankind, both masters and servants, as to supersede the necessity of a particular day. At present our Sunday may be considered as so much Holy Land, rescued from the sea of oppression and vain luxury, and embanked against the fury of their billows.

RIDE AND TIE.

"On a scheme of perfect retribution in the moral world"--observed Empeiristes, and paused to look at, and wipe his spectacles.