Samuel Taylor Coleridge

 

Fears in Solitude

• A green and silent spot, amid the hills,
• A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place
• No singing sky-lark ever poised himself.
• The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope,
• Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on,
• All golden with the never-bloomless furze,
• Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell,
• Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate
• As vernal corn-field, or the unripe flax,
• When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve,
• The level sunshine glimmers with green light.
• Oh ! 'tis a quiet spirit-healing nook !
• Which all, methinks, would love ; but chiefly he,
• The humble man, who, in his youthful years,
• Knew just so much of folly, as had made
• His early manhood more securely wise !
• Here he might lie on fern or withered heath,
• While from the singing lark (that sings unseen
• The minstrelsy that solitude loves best),
• And from the sun, and from the breezy air,
• Sweet influences trembled o'er his frame ;
• And he, with many feelings, many thoughts,
• Made up a meditative joy, and found
• Religious meanings in the forms of Nature !
• And so, his senses gradually wrapt
• In a half sleep, he dreams of better worlds,
• And dreaming hears thee still, O singing lark,
• That singest like an angel in the clouds !
• My God ! it is a melancholy thing
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• For such a man, who would full fain preserve
• His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel
• For all his human brethren--O my God !
• It weighs upon the heart, that he must think
• What uproar and what strife may now be stirring
• This way or that way o'er these silent hills--
• Invasion, and the thunder and the shout,
• And all the crash of onset ; fear and rage,
• And undetermined conflict--even now,
• Even now, perchance, and in his native isle :
• Carnage and groans beneath this blessed sun !
• We have offended, Oh ! my countrymen !
• We have offended very grievously,
• And been most tyrannous. From east to west
• A groan of accusation pierces Heaven !
• The wretched plead against us ; multitudes
• Countless and vehement, the sons of God,
• Our brethren ! Like a cloud that travels on,
• Steamed up from Cairo's swamps of pestilence,
• Even so, my countrymen ! have we gone forth
• And borne to distant tribes slavery and pangs,
• And, deadlier far, our vices, whose deep taint
• With slow perdition murders the whole man,
• His body and his soul ! Meanwhile, at home,
• All individual dignity and power
• Engulfed in Courts, Committees, Institutions,
• Associations and Societies,
• A vain, speach-mouthing, speech-reporting Guild,
• One Benefit-Club for mutual flattery,
• We have drunk up, demure as at a grace,
• Pollutions from the brimming cup of wealth ;
• Contemptuous of all honourable rule,
• Yet bartering freedom and the poor man's life
• For gold, as at a market ! The sweet words
• Of Christian promise, words that even yet
• Might stem destruction, were they wisely preached,
• Are muttered o'er by men, whose tones proclaim
• How flat and wearisome they feel their trade :
• Rank scoffers some, but most too indolent
• To deem them falsehoods or to know their truth.
• Oh ! blasphemous ! the Book of Life is made
• A superstitious instrument, on which
• We gabble o'er the oaths we mean to break ;
• For all must swear--all and in every place,
• College and wharf, council and justice-court ;
• All, all must swear, the briber and the bribed,
• Merchant and lawyer, senator and priest,
• The rich, the poor, the old man and the young ;
• All, all make up one scheme of perjury,
• That faith doth reel ; the very name of God
• Sounds like a juggler's charm ; and, bold with joy,
• Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place,
• (Portentious sight !) the owlet Atheism,
• Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon,
• Drops his blue-fringéd lids, and holds them close,
• And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven,
• Cries out, ‘Where is it ?’
• Thankless too for peace,
•  
• (Peace long preserved by fleets and perilous seas)
• Secure from actual warfare, we have loved
• To swell the war-whoop, passionate for war !
• Alas ! for ages ignorant of all
• Its ghastlier workings, (famine or blue plague,
• Battle, or siege, or flight through wintry snows,)
• We, this whole people, have been clamorous
• For war and bloodshed ; animating sports,
• The which we pay for as a thing to talk of,
• Spectators and not combatants ! No guess
• Anticipative of a wrong unfelt,
• No speculation on contingency,
• However dim and vague, too vague and dim
• To yield a justifying cause ; and forth,
• (Stuffed out with big preamble, holy names,
• And adjurations of the God in Heaven,)
• We send our mandates for the certain death
• Of thousands and ten thousands ! Boys and girls,
• And women, that would groan to see a child
• Pull off an insect's wing, all read of war,
• The best amusement for our morning meal !
• The poor wretch, who has learnt his only prayers
• From curses, and who knows scarcely words enough
• To ask a blessing from his Heavenly Father,
• Becomes a fluent phraseman, absolute
• And technical in victories and defeats,
• And all our dainty terms for fratricide ;
• Terms which we trundle smoothly o'er our tongues
• Like mere abstractions, empty sounds to which
• We join no feeling and attach no form !
• As if the soldier died without a wound ;
• As if the fibres of this godlike frame
• Were gored without a pang ; as if the wretch,
• Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
• Passed off to Heaven, translated and not killed ;
• As though he had no wife to pine for him,
• No God to judge him ! Therefore, evil days
• Are coming on us, O my countrymen !
• And what if all-avenging Providence,
• Strong and retributive, should make us know
• The meaning of our words, force us to feel
• The desolation and the agony
• Of our fierce doings ?
• Spare us yet awhile,
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• Father and God ! O ! spare us yet awhile !
• Oh ! let not English women drag their flight
• Fainting beneath the burthen of their babes,
• Of the sweet infants, that but yesterday
• Laughed at the breast ! Sons, brothers, husbands, all
• Who ever gazed with fondness on the forms
• Which grew up with you round the same fire-side,
• And all who ever heard the sabbath-bells
• Without the infidel's scorn, make yourselves pure !
• Stand forth ! be men ! repel an impious foe,
• Impious and false, a light yet cruel race,
• Who laugh away all virtue, mingling mirth
• With deeds of murder ; and still promising
• Freedom, themselves too sensual to be free,
• Poison life's amities, and cheat the heart
• Of faith and quiet hope, and all that soothes,
• And all that lifts the spirit ! Stand we forth ;
• Render them back upon the insulted ocean,
• And let them toss as idly on its waves
• As the vile sea-weed, which some mountain-blast
• Swept from our shores ! And oh ! may we return
• Not with a drunken triumph, but with fear,
• Repenting of the wrongs with which we stung
• So fierce a foe to frenzy !
• I have told,
• O Britons ! O my brethren ! I have told
• Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
• Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed ;
• For never can true courage dwell with them,
• Who, playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
• At their own vices. We have been too long
• Dupes of a deep delusion ! Some, belike,
• Groaning with restless enmity, expect
• All change from change of constituted power ;
• As if a Government had been a robe,
• On which our vice and wretchedness were tagged
• Like fancy-points and fringes, with the robe
• Pulled off at pleasure. Fondly these attach
• A radical causation to a few
• Poor drudges of chastising Providence,
• Who borrow all their hues and qualities
• From our own folly and rank wickedness,
• Which gave them birth and nursed them. Others, meanwhile,
• Dote with a mad idolatry ; and all
• Who will not fall before their images,
• And yield them worship, they are enemies
• Even of their country !
• Such have I been deemed--
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• But, O dear Britain ! O my Mother Isle !
• Needs must thou prove a name most dear and holy
• To me, a son, a brother, and a friend,
• A husband, and a father ! who revere
• All bonds of natural love, and find them all
• Within the limits of thy rocky shores.
• O native Britain ! O my Mother Isle !
• How shouldst thou prove aught else but dear and holy
• To me, who from thy lakes and mountain-hills,
• Thy clouds, thy quiet dales, thy rocks and seas,
• Have drunk in all my intellectual life,
• All sweet sensations, all ennobling thoughts,
• All adoration of God in nature,
• All lovely and all honourable things,
• Whatever makes this mortal spirit feel
• The joy and greatness of its future being ?
• There lives nor form nor feeling in my soul
• Unborrowed from my country ! O divine
• And beauteous island ! thou hast been my sole
• And most magnificent temple, in the which
• I walk with awe, and sing my stately songs,
• Loving the God that made me !--
• May my fears,
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• My filial fears, be vain ! and may the vaunts
• And menace of the vengeful enemy
• Pass like the gust, that roared and died away
• In the distant tree : which heard, and only heard
• In this low dell, bowed not the delicate grass.
• But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad
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• The fruit-like perfume of the golden furze :
• The light has left the summit of the hill,
• Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful,
• Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell,
• Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot !
• On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill,
• Homeward I wind my way ; and lo ! recalled
• From bodings that have well-nigh wearied me,
• I find myself upon the brow, and pause
• Startled ! And after lonely sojourning
• In such a quiet and surrounded nook,
• This burst of prospect, here the shadowy main,
• Dim tinted, there the mighty majesty
• Of that huge amphitheatre of rich
• And elmy fields, seems like society--
• Conversing with the mind, and giving it
• A livelier impulse and a dance of thought !
• And now, belovéd Stowey ! I behold
• Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms
• Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend ;
• And close behind them, hidden from my view,
• Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe
• And my babe's mother dwell in peace ! With light
• And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend,
• Remembering thee, O green and silent dell !
• And grateful, that by nature's quietness
• And solitary musings, all my heart
• Is softened, and made worthy to indulge
• Love, and the thoughts that yearn for human kind.