SONNET. APRIL, 1793. WHOSE was that gentle voice, that whispering sweet, Promised methought long days of bliss sincere? Soothing it stole on my deluded ear, Most like soft music, that might sometimes cheat Thoughts dark and drooping! 'Twas the voice of hope. Of love, and social scenes, it seem'd to speak, Of truth, of friendship, of affection meek; That, O! poor friend, might to life's downward slope Lead us in peace, and bless our latest hours. Ah me! the prospect sadden'd as she sung; Loud on my startled ear the death-bell rung; Chill darkness wrapt the pleasurable bowers, Whilst horror, pointing to yon breathless clay, "No peace be thine," exclaim'd; "away, away!" SONNET. MAY, 1793. As o'er these hills I take my silent rounds, Such recollections, painful though they seem, SONNET. O HARMONY! thou tenderest nurse of pain, Till memory her fairest tints shall bring, That waved o'er the charm'd sense its gladsome wing: For when thou leadest all thy soothing strains More smooth along, the silent passions meet In one suspended transport, sad and sweet, And naught but sorrow's softest touch remains, That, when the transitory charm is o'er, Just wakes a tear, and then is felt no more. SONNET. MAY, 1793. How shall I meet thee, summer, wont to fill As with the songs of joyance and of hope Thinking their May-tide fragrance might delight, With many a peaceful charm, thee, my best friend, Shall put forth their green shoot, and cheer the sight! But I shall mark their hues with sickening eyes, And weep for her who in the cold grave lies! SONNET. How blest with thee the path could I have trod In youth and beauty, go to thy death-bed; E'en whilst on dreams of bliss we fondly fed, Of years to come of comfort!-Be it so. Ere this I have felt sorrow; and e'en now (Though sometimes the unbidden thought must start, And half unman the miserable heart) The cold dew I shall wipe from my sad brow, And say, since hopes of bliss on earth are vain, "Best friend, farewell, till we do meet again?" Didst soothe me, bidding my poor heart rejoice, Though smitten sore: O, I did little think That thou, my friend, wouldst the first victim fall To the stern king of terrors! thou didst fly, By pity prompted, at the poor man's cry; And soon thyself wert stretch'd beneath the pall, Livid infection's prey. The deep distress Of her, who best thy inmost bosom knew, To whom thy faith was vow'd, thy soul was true, What powers of faltering language shall express As friendship bids, I feebly breathe my own, And sorrowing say, "Pure spirit, thou art gone!" SONNET. ON THE DEATH OF THE REV. WILLIAM BENWELL. THOU сamest with kind looks, when on the brink Almost of death I strove, and with mild voice The following elegant inscription to the memory of this amiable and excellent young man is prefixed to the chancel of Caversham church, near Reading, and does merely justice to the many valuable qualifications of him whose virtues and graces it records : Near this Chancel are deposited The Remains of the REV. WILLIAM BENWELL, He was remarkable for correctness of taste, In manners and conversation he possessed a natural grace; a winning courtesy, truly expressive of the heavenly serenity of his mind, and of the meekness, lowliness and benevolence of his heart. To his Relations, and to his Companions whom he loved, he was most tenderly and consistently affectionate: To the poor a zealous friend, a wise and patient instructer; By his mildness cheering the sorrowful; And, by the pure and amiable sanctity which beamed in his countenance, repressing the licentious. Habitually pious, He appeared in every instance of life as in the sight of God. He died Sept. 6th, 96, in his 32d year: His soul pleased the LORD, therefore hasted He to take him away. This Tablet was erected to his Memory, with heartfelt grief, and the tenderest affection, By PENELOPE, eldest daughter of JOHN LOVEDAY, Esq.; and PENELOPE his wife, Who, after many years of the most ardent friendship, became his wife and his widow in the course of eleven weeks!" SONNET. WRITTEN AT MALVERN, JULY 11, 1793. I SHALL behold far off thy towering crest, SONNET. ON REVIEWING THE FOREGOING. SEPT. 21, 1797. say, "Alas! how many friends of youth are dead, How many visions of fair hope have fled, Since first, my muse, we met:"-So speeds away Life, and its shadows; yet we sit and sing, Stretch'd in the noontide bower, as if the day Declined not, and we yet might trill our lay Beneath the pleasant morning's purple wing That fans us, while aloft the gay clouds shine! O, ere the coming of the long cold night, RELIGION, may we bless thy purer light, That still shall warm us, when the tints decline O'er earth's dim hemisphere, and sad we gaze On the vain visions of our passing days! SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. maps with which he was reported to have supplied the French government, in aid of their plans of invasion. A perusal of Bowles's Sonnets appears to have first inspired him with a taste for poetry, of which his earliest specimen was given to the public in a small volume, published previously to the foregoing incident, in which publication a monody on the death of the unfortunate Chatterton was universally admired. In 1795, he published some antiministerial pamphlets; and in the following year, made an unsuccessful attempt to establish a periodical paper, called The Watchman, at the persua sion, he says, of sundry philanthropists and antipolemists. His next publication was a poem on the prospect of peace; he shortly afterwards accompanied Sir Alexander Ball, governor of Malta, as his secretary; and, on his return from this employment, became entitled to a pension. This so far full liberty to pursue his literary designs, he engaged in the publication of a variety of works, and delivered two public courses of lectures, one on the plays of Shakspeare, and another on poetry and the belles lettres, which gained him a reputation for considerable oratorical powers. In 1813, he published Remorse, a tragedy; followed, in 1817, by Sibylline Leaves; A Collection of Poems; his Biographia Literaria, or biographical sketches of his life and opinions; and other works, poetical and SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE was born at Bristol, about 1770, where he received the earliest portion of his education. He was afterwards sent to Christ's Hospital, London, where, he says, in his Biographia Literaria, "I enjoyed the inestimable advantage of a very sensible, though, at the same time, a very severe master, the Rev. James Bowyer, who early moulded my taste to the preference of Demosthenes to Cicero, of Homer and Theocritus to Virgil, and again of Virgil to Ovid, &c." From Christ's Hospital he was sent to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he obtained the Sir William Brown's gold medal, for the best Greek ode, in 1792. About the same time, he became acquainted with Southey, then a student of Baliol College, Oxford, and, like himself, imbued with ardent predilections for poesy and liberty. With him and some other young men, he entered into a scheme, which want of means alone prevented them from putting into execution, for settling on the Susque-improving his circumstances as to leave him at hannah river, in North America, under a pantisocratic form of society. About 1794, he retired to Alforton, in Somersetshire, where he was joined by his friend Wordsworth, with whom he passed his time in literary pursuits, and in wandering about the Quantock hills, with such an air of mystery, that they became objects of suspicion to the neighbourhood. A spy was set upon their conduct, and an examination actually appears to have taken place, by the village authorities, of a poor rustic who was supposed to have discovered their dan-political. In 1818, he commenced The Friend, a gerous designs. Our author has given a ludicrous account of this in the work before quoted from, and the conclusion is worth extracting, as developing somewhat of his habits and character. "Has not this Mr. Coleridge been wandering on the hills towards the channel, and along the shore, with books and papers in his hand, taking charts and maps of the country?"-"Why, as to that, your honour," was the rustic's reply; "I am sure I would not wish to say ill of anybody; but it is certain that I have heard-" "Speak out, man! don't be afraid: you are doing your duty to your king and government. What have you heard?" "Why, folks do say, your honour, as how that he is a poet; and that he is going to put Quan-vourite topic, to be possessed of the faculty of rivettock, and all about here, in print; and as they (Wordsworth and Coleridge) be so much together, I suppose that the strange gentleman (Wordsworth) has some consarn in the business." The business which engaged him was the composition of a poem, to be called The Brook, which, had he finished, it was his intention to have dedicated to the committec of public safety, as containing the charts and series of essays, that extended to three volumes; and in the tenth and eleventh numbers of which, he says, he has left a record of his principles. In 1825, he published Aids to Reflection, in the formation of a manly character, &c.; and, in 1830, bis Treatise on the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the idea of each: with aids towards a right judgment of the late Catholic bill. Mr. Coleridge towards the close of life resided at Highgate, where he occasionally received his literary friends, and passed his time in reading, and the amusements of his garden. He was said to excel all his contemporaries in powers of argument; and, when once fairly launched on any fa ing for hours, the attention of his audience by the charm of his eloquence alone. He died July 25th, 1834. In addition to the works already mentioned, he wrote, during the peace of Amiens, essays for The Morning Post and Courier. Mr. Fox is said to have pointed his allusion to these contribu tions, when he declared, that the war, which fol520 lowed the above treaty, was a war raised by The Morning Post. Whilst Mr. Coleridge was staying at Rome, Bonaparte is said to have sent an order for his arrest, from which he was rescued, partly, by the forbearance of the late pope, Pius the Seventh. Our poet, however, has never displayed any evidence of his having been guided by any fixed political creed; and he altogether disowns, as was hinted by The Morning Chronicle, that he ever bettered his fortune by his labours as a political writer. Indeed, it is as a poet only that he will be known by posterity; however zealously his friends may labour to procure a reputation for him as the founder of a sect in morals or philosophy. The chief fault of Coleridge's poetry lies in the style, which has been justly objected to on account of its obscurity, general turgidness of diction, and a profusion of new-coined double epithets. With regard to its obscurity, he says, in the preface to a late edition of his poems, that where he appears unintelligible," the deficiency is in the reader." This is nothing more or less than to suppose his readers endowed with the powers of divination; for we defy any one who is not in the confidence of the au thor upon this subject, to solve the riddle which is appended as a conclusion to Christabel. He might as well attribute deficiency of capacity to a beholder of his countenance, who should fail, in its workings, to discover the exact emotions of his mind; for Mr. Coleridge has afforded no clearer clue to the generality of his poetical arcana. This is particularly manifest in his singularly wild and striking poem of The Ancient Mariner, on which he is said to have written the following epigram, addressed to himself: "Your poem must eternal be, Dear sir! it cannot fail; For, 'tis incomprehensible, And without head or tail." Mr. Coleridge is unquestionably at the head of the Lake school of poetry, and excels all his fraternity of that class in feeling, fancy, and sublimity. Some of his minor poems will bear comparison with those of the bards of this or any other age or country; and his verses on Love appear to us the most touching, delicate, and beautiful delineation of that passion that ever was penned. SIBYLLINE LEAVES. 1. POEMS OCCASIONED BY POLITICAL EVENTS OR FEELINGS CONNECTED WITH THEM. When I have borne in memory what has tamed who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November, 1796; having just concluded a subsidiary treaty with the kings combined against France. The first and second antistrophe describe the image of the departing year, etc. as in a vision. The second epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of this country. SPIRIT who sweepest the wild harp of time! With inward stillness, and submitted mind; I saw the train of the departing year! Starting from my silent sadness, Then with no unholy madness, Ere yet the enter'd cloud foreclosed my sight, I raised th' impetuous song, and solemnized his flight. II. Hither, from the recent tomb, From the prison's direr gloom, From distemper's midnight anguish ; And thence, where poverty doth waste and languish, Or where, o'er cradled infants bending, Ye woes! ye young-eyed joys! advance! Raises its fateful strings from sleep, I bid you haste, a mix'd, tumultuous band! And each domestic hearth, 2 x 2 I mark'd Ambition in his war array! I heard the mailed monarch's troublous cry— "Ah! wherefore does the northern conqueress stay! Groans not her chariot on its onward way?" Stunn'd by death's twice mortal mace, Th' insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye! Ye that gasp'd on Warsaw's plain! Ye that erst at Ismail's tower, When human ruin choked the streams, Fell in conquest's glutted hour, 'Mid women's shrieks and infant's screams! Spirits of the uncoffin'd slain, Sudden blasts of triumph swelling, Oft, at night, in misty train, Rush around her narrow dwelling! The exterminating fiend is filed (Foul her life, and dark her doom)Mighty armies of the dead Dance like death-fires round her tomb! IV. Departing year! 'twas on no earthly shore Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued, Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone, Then, his eye wild ardours glancing, The Spirit of the earth made reverence meet, V. Throughout the blissful throng, Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven (The mystic words of heaven) Permissive signal make: But chief by Afric's wrongs, Strange, horrible, and foul! By what deep guilt belongs To the deaf synod, full of gifts and lies! By wealth's insensate laugh! by torture's howl! Avenger, rise! For ever shall the thankless island scowl, Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! VI. The voice had ceased, the vision filed; Yet still I gasp'd and reel'd with dread. Wild is the tempest of my heart; The soldier on the war-field spread, Lies pillow'd on a brother's corse!) Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, Echo to the bleat of flocks, Or sack'd thy towers, or stain'd thy fields with gore. VIII. Abandon'd of Heaven! mad avarice thy guide, At cowardly distance, yet kindling with pride'Mid thy herds and thy corn-fields secure thou hast stood, The fervent spirit bow'd, then spread his wings And join'd the wild yelling of famine and blood! and spake ! "Thou in stormy blackness throning By the earth's unsolaced groaning, And hunger's bosom to the frost winds bared! The nations curse thee! They with eager wondering Shall hear destruction, like a vulture, scream! Strange-eyed destruction! who with many a dream Of central fires through nether seas upthundering O Albion thy predestined ruins rise, |