Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Eolian Harp
My pensive Sara! thy soft cheek reclined | ||
Thus on mine arm, most soothing sweet it is | ||
To sit beside our Cot, our Cot o'ergrown | ||
With white-flower'd Jasmin, and the broad-leaved Myrtle, | ||
5 | (Meet emblems they of Innocence and Love!) | |
And watch the clouds, that late were rich with light, | ||
Slow saddening round, and mark the star of eve | ||
Serenely brilliant (such should Wisdom be) | ||
Shine opposite! How exquisite the scents | ||
10 | Snatched from yon bean-field! and the world so hushed! | |
The stilly murmur of the distant Sea | ||
Tells us of silence. | ||
And that simplest Lute, | ||
Placed length-ways in the clasping casement, hark! | ||
15 | How by the desultory breeze caressed, | |
Like some coy maid half-yielding to her lover, | ||
It pours such sweet upbraiding, as must needs | ||
Tempt to repeat the wrong! And now, its strings | ||
Boldlier swept, the long sequacious notes | ||
20 | Over delicious surges sink and rise, | |
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, | ||
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 joyance every where - | ||
30 | Methinks, it should have been impossible | |
Not to love all things in a world so fill'd; | ||
Where the breeze warbles, and the mute still air | ||
Is Music slumbering on her instrument. | ||
35 | And thus, my Love! as on the midway slope | |
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, | ||
And tranquil muse upon tranquillity: | ||
40 | Full many a thought uncalled and undetain'd, | |
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 diversly 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 ? | ||
50 | But thy more serious eye a mild reproof | |
Darts, O belovèd 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! | ||
55 | Well hast thou said and holily dispraised | |
These shapings of the unregenerate mind; | ||
Bubbles that glitter as they rise and break | ||
On vain Philosophy's aye-babbling spring. | ||
For never guiltless may I speak of him, | ||
60 | The Incomprehensible! save when with awe | |
I praise him, and with Faith that inly feels; | ||
Who with his saving mercies healed me, | ||
A sinful and most miserable man, | ||
Wildered and dark, and gave me to possess | ||
Peace, and this Cot, and thee, heart-honoured Maid! |
First published 1796
This publication dated 1835
Robert Clark
To see a pdf file of the first published form of this poem, Effusion XXXV, published in Poems on Various Subjects, 1796, please click on this link.
Daniel Robinson