110 What tell'st thou now about? 'Tis of the rushing of a host in rout,
With groans of trampled men, with smarting wounds?? At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold! But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!
lis And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, With groans, and tremulous shudderings?all is over?
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud! A tale of less affright, And tempered with delight,
120 As Otway's9 self had framed the tender lay, 'Tis of a little child Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way: And now moans low in bitter grief and fear, 125 And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.
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'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep: Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep! Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,1 130 May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling,
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth! With light heart may she rise, Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,
Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice; 135 To her may all things live, from pole to pole, Their life the eddying of her living soul!
O simple spirit, guided from above, Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice. Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice.
Apr. 4, 1802 1802
The Pains of Sleep1
Ere on my bed my limbs I lay, It hath not been my use to pray With moving lips or bended knees; But silently, by slow degrees,
9. Thomas Otway (1652?1685), a dramatist noted entirely to the Horrors of every night?I truly dread for the pathos of his tragic passages. The poet orig-to sleep. It is no shadow with me, but substantial
inally named was 'William,' and the allusion was Misery foot-thick, that makes me sit by my bedside
probably to Wordsworth's 'Lucy Gray.' of a morning, 8c cry?. I have abandoned all opiates
1. Probably, 'May this be a typical mountain except Ether be one; & that only in fits. . . . ' The storm, short though violent,' although Coleridge last sentence indicates what Coleridge did not might have intended an allusion to Horace's phrase know?that his guilty nightmares were probably 'the mountain labored and brought forth a withdrawal symptoms from opium. The dreams he mouse.' describes are very similar to those that De Quincey 1. Coleridge included a draft of this poem in a let-represents as 'The Pains of Opium' in his Confester to Robert Southey, September 11, 1803, in sions of an English Opium-Eater. which he wrote that 'my spirits are dreadful, owing
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47 0 / SAMUE L TAYLOR COLERIDG E My spirit I to Love compose, In humble trust mine eye-lids close, With reverential resignation, No wish conceived, no thought exprest, Only a sense of supplication; A sense o'er all my soul imprest That I am weak, yet not unblest, Since in me, round me, every where Eternal strength and wisdom are. But yester-night I prayed aloud In anguish and in agony, Up-starting from the fiendish crowd Of shapes and thoughts that tortured me: A lurid light, a trampling throng, Sense of intolerable wrong, And whom I scorned, those only strong! Thirst of revenge, the powerless will Still baffled, and yet burning still! Desire with loathing strangely mixed On wild or hateful objects fixed. Fantastic passions! maddening brawl! And shame and terror over all! Deeds to be hid which were not hid, Which all confused I could not know, Whether I suffered, or I did: For all seemed guilt, remorse or woe, My own or others still the same Life-stifling fear, soul-stifling shame. So two nights passed: the night's dismay Saddened and stunned the coming day. Sleep, the wide blessing, seemed to me Distemper's worst calamity. The third night, when my own loud scream Had waked me from the fiendish dream, O'ercome with sufferings strange and wild, I wept as I had been a child; And having thus by tears subdued My anguish to a milder mood, Such punishments, I said, were due To natures deepliest stained with sin,? For aye entempesting anew The unfathomable hell within, The horror of their deeds to view, To know and loathe, yet wish and do! Such griefs with such men well agree, But wherefore, wherefore fall on me? To be beloved is all I need, And whom I love, I love indeed. 1803 1816
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To WILLIAM WORDSWORTH / 47 1
To William Wordsworth
Composed on the Night after His Recitation of a Poem on the Growth of an Individual Mind'
Friend of the wise! and teacher of the good!
Into my heart have I received that lay? song
More than historic, that prophetic lay
Wherein (high theme by thee first sung aright)
5 Of the foundations and the building up
Of a Human Spirit thou hast dared to tell
What may be told, to the understanding mind
Revealable; and what within the mind
By vital breathings secret as the soul
10 Of vernal0 growth, oft quickens in the heart springtimeThoughts all too deep for words!2?
