Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes Upon the strings of this Eolian lute,2 Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
10 And overspread with phantom light, (With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming on of rain and squally blast,
is And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed, And sent my soul abroad, Might now perhaps their wonted0 impulse give, customary20 Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live!
2
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
1. This poem originated in a verse letter of 340 the hopelessness of his love for Sara Hutchinson. lines, called 'A Letter to ,' that Coleridge In the next six months Coleridge deleted more than wrote on the night of April 4, 1802, after hearing half the original lines, revised and reordered the the opening stanzas of 'Ode: Intimations of remaining passages, and so transformed a long Immortality,' which Wordsworth had just com-verse confession into the compact and dignified posed. The 'Letter' was addressed to Sara Hutch-'Dejection: An Ode.' He published the 'Ode,' in inson (whom Coleridge sometimes called 'Asra'), substantially its present form, on October 4, 1802, the sister of Wordsworth's fiancee, Mary. It picked Wordsworth's wedding day?and also the seventh up the theme of a loss in the quality of perceptual anniversary of Coleridge's own disastrous marriage experience that Wordsworth had presented at the to Sara Fricker.
beginning of his 'Ode.' In his original poem Cole-2. A stringed instrument played upon by the wind
ridge lamented at length his unhappy marriage and (see 'The Eolian Harp,' n. 1, p. 426).
.
DEJECTION: AN ODE / 46 7
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief, In word, or sigh, or tear? 25 O Lady!3 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:
30 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 bedimmed, but always seen:
35 Yon crescent Moon as fixed as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
3
My genial' spirits fail; creative 40 And what can these avail
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? It were a vain endeavour, Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west: 45 I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.
4
O Lady! we receive but what we give, And in our life alone does nature live: Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud!4
50 And would we aught? behold, of higher worth, anythingThan that inanimate cold world allowed To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth, A light, a glory,5 a fair luminous cloud 55 ? 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!
5
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
60 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 power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
3. In the original version 'Sara'?i.e., Sara 5. A 'glory' is a halo. Coleridge often uses the Hutchinson. After intervening versions, in which term to identify in particular the phenomenon that the poem was addressed first to 'William' (Words-occurs in the mountains when a walker sees his or worth) and then to 'Edmund,' Coleridge intro- her own figure projected by the sun in the mist, duced the noncommittal 'Lady' in 1817. enlarged and with light encircling its head. Cf. 4. I.e., nature's wedding garment and shroud are Wordsworth's Prelude 8.268-70 (p. 368). ours to give to her.
.
468 / SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
65 Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
