Boldlier swept, the long sequacious0 notes regularly following
Over delicious surges sink and rise,
20 Such a soft floating witchery of sound
As twilight Elfins make, when they at eve
Voyage on gentle gales from Fairy-Land,
Where Melodies round honey-dropping flowers,
Footless and wild, like birds of Paradise,2
25 Nor pause, nor perch, hovering on untamed wing!
O the one life within us and abroad,
Which meets all motion and becomes its soul,
A light in sound, a sound-like power in light,
Rhythm in all thought, and joyance3 every where?
30 Methinks, it should have been impossible
Not to love all things in a world so filled;
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air
Is Music slumbering on her instrument.
And thus, my love! as on the midway slope
35 Of yonder hill I stretch my limbs at noon,
Whilst through my half-closed eye-lids I behold
The sunbeams dance, like diamonds, on the main,0 ocean
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity;
Full many a thought uncalled and undetained,
40 And many idle flitting phantasies,
Traverse my indolent and passive brain,
As wild and various as the random gales
That swell and flutter on this subject lute!
And what if all of animated nature
45 Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
At once the Soul of each, and God of All?
But thy more serious eye a mild reproof
50 Darts, O beloved woman! nor such thoughts
Dim and unhallowed dost thou not reject,
And biddest me walk humbly with my God.
Meek daughter in the family of Christ!
Well hast thou said and holily dispraised
55 These shapings of the unregenerate4 mind;
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling? spring. ever babbling
For never guiltless may I speak of him,
The Incomprehensible! save when with awe
2. Brilliantly colored birds found in New Guinea nectar. and adjacent islands. The native practice of remov-3. An archaic term for enjoyment, coined in the
ing the legs when preparing the skin led Europeans 16th century by Spenser and reintroduced by
to believe that the birds were footless and spent Coleridge.
their lives hovering in the air and feeding on 4. Spiritually unredeemed; not born again.
.
42 8 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels;
