WORDSWORTH AND COLERIDGE. For, if a vestige of those gleams Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serve Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light -'Tis past; the visionary splendour fades; 307 Although I have mentioned Wordsworth before Coleridge because he was two years older, yet Coleridge had much to do with the opening of Wordsworth's eyes to such visions; as, indeed, more than any man in our times, he has opened the eyes of the English people to see wonderful things. There is little of a directly religious kind in his poetry; yet we find in him what we miss in Wordsworth, an inclined plane from the revelation in nature to the culminating revelation in the Son of Man. Somehow, I say, perhaps because we find it in his prose, we feel more of this in Coleridge's verse. Coleridge is a sage, and Wordsworth is a seer; yet when the sage sees, that is, when, like the son of Beor, he falls into a trance having his eyes open, or, when feeling and sight are one and philosophy is in abeyance, the ecstasy is even loftier in Coleridge than in Wordsworth. In their highest moods they seem almost to change places-Wordsworth to become sage, and Coleridge seer. Perhaps the grandest hymn of praise which man, the mouth-piece of Nature, utters for her, is the hymn of Mont Blanc. HYMN Before sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni. Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody, So sweet, we know not we are listening to it, Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought, As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven! Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise Thou first and chief, sole sovran1 of the Vale! 1 The mountain. MONT BLANC FROM CHAMOUNI. And visited all night by troops of stars,1 And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, And who commanded-and the silence came- Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice! And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! 1 These two lines are just the symbol for the life of their author. 2 From the rose-light on the snow of its peak. 309 They all flow from under the glaciers, fed by their constant melting. + Turning for contrast to the glaciers, which he apostrophizes in the next line. Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost! Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise. Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks, Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth! Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God. Here is one little poem I think most valuable, both from its fulness of meaning, and the form, as clear as condensed, in which that is embodied. ON AN INFANT Which died before baptism. "Be rather than be called a child of God," Death whispered. With assenting nod, Its head upon its mother's breast The baby bowed without demur Of the kingdom of the blest Possessor, not inheritor. 1 Antecedent, peaks. HARTLEY COLERIDGE. 311 Next the father let me place the gifted son, Hartley Coleridge. He was born in 1796, and died in 1849. Strange, wayward, and in one respect faulty, as his life was, his poetry-strange, and exceedingly wayward too-is often very lovely. The following sonnet is all I can find room for : "SHE LOVED MUCH." She sat and wept beside his feet. The weight She sat and wept, and with her untressed hair From her sweet soul, because she loved so much. I am a sinner, full of doubts and fears: Make me a humble thing of love and tears. |