Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834 John Bartlett


1
He holds him with his glittering eye, And listens like a three years’ child. 1
The Ancient Mariner. Part i.
2
Red as a rose is she.
The Ancient Mariner. Part i.
3
We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea.
The Ancient Mariner. Part ii.
4
As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.
The Ancient Mariner. Part ii.
5
Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.
The Ancient Mariner. Part ii.
6
Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iii.
7
The nightmare Life-in-Death was she.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iii.
8
The sun’s rim dips; the stars rush out: At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper o’er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iii.
9
And thou art long and lank and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. 2
The Ancient Mariner. Part iv.
10
Alone, alone,—all, all alone; Alone on a wide, wide sea.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iv.



11
The moving moon went up the sky, And nowhere did abide; Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iv.
12
A spring of love gush’d from my heart, And I bless’d them unaware.
The Ancient Mariner. Part iv.
13
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole.
The Ancient Mariner. Part v.
14
A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune.
The Ancient Mariner. Part v.
15
Like one that on a lonesome road Doth walk in fear and dread, And having once turned round walks on, And turns no more his head, Because he knows a frightful fiend Doth close behind him tread.
The Ancient Mariner. Part vi.
16
So lonely ’t was, that God himself Scarce seemed there to be.
The Ancient Mariner. Part vii.
17
He prayeth well who loveth well Both man and bird and beast.
The Ancient Mariner. Part vii.
18
He prayeth best who loveth best All things both great and small.
The Ancient Mariner. Part vii.
19
A sadder and a wiser man, He rose the morrow morn.
The Ancient Mariner. Part vii.
20
And the spring comes slowly up this way.
Christabel. Part i.
21
A lady richly clad as she, Beautiful exceedingly.
Christabel. Part i.
22
Carv’d with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver’s brain.
Christabel. Part i.
23
Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.
Christabel. Part i.
24
A sight to dream of, not to tell!
Christabel. Part i.
25
That saints will aid if men will call; For the blue sky bends over all!
Christabel. Conclusion to part i.
26
Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death.
Christabel. Part ii.
27
Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!
Christabel. Part ii.
28
Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth, And constancy live in realms above; And life is thorny, and youth is vain, And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.
Christabel. Part ii.
29
They stood aloof, the scars remaining,— Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between.
Christabel. Part ii.
30
Perhaps ’t is pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm.
Christabel. Conclusion to Part ii.
31
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree, Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.
Kubla Khan.
32
Ancestral voices prophesying war.
Kubla Khan.
33
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid, And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora.
Kubla Khan.
34
For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Kubla Khan.
35
Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care; The opening bud to heaven conveyed, And bade it blossom there.
Epitaph on an Infant.
36
Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples bare, And shot my being through earth, sea, and air, Possessing all things with intensest love, O Liberty! my spirit felt thee there.
France. An Ode. v.
37
Forth from his dark and lonely hiding-place (Portentous sight!) the owlet Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fring’d lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in heaven Cries out, “Where is it?”
Fears in Solitude.
38
And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin Is pride that apes humility. 3
The Devil’s Thoughts.
39
All thoughts, all passions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame, All are but ministers of Love, And feed his sacred flame.
Love.
40
Blest hour! it was a luxury—to be!
Reflections on having left a Place of Retirement.
41
A charm For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom No sound is dissonant which tells of life.
This Lime-tree Bower my Prison.
42
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star In his steep course?
Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
43
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines.
Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
44
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
45
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost.
Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
46
Earth with her thousand voices praises God.
Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni.
47
Tranquillity! thou better name Than all the family of Fame.
Ode to Tranquillity.
48
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.
Dejection. An Ode. Stanza 1.
49
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud. We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.
Dejection. An Ode. Stanza 5.
50
A mother is a mother still, The holiest thing alive.
The Three Graves.
51
Never, believe me, Appear the Immortals, Never alone.
The Visit of the Gods. (Imitated from Schiller.)
52
Joy rises in me, like a summer’s morn.
A Christmas Carol. viii.
53
The knight’s bones are dust, And his good sword rust; His soul is with the saints, I trust.
The Knight’s Tomb.
54
It sounds like stories from the laud of spirits If any man obtains that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains. `. . . . . . . . .` Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures,—love and light, And calm thoughts, regular as infants’ breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,— Himself, his Maker, and the angel Death.
Complaint. Ed. 1852. The Good Great Man. Ed. 1893.
55
My eyes make pictures when they are shut.
A Day-Dream.
56
To know, to esteem, to love, and then to part, Makes up life’s tale to many a feeling heart!
On taking Leave of ————, 1817.
57
In many ways doth the full heart reveal The presence of the love it would conceal.
Motto to Poems written in Later Life.
58
Nought cared this body for wind or weather When youth and I lived in ’t together.
Youth and Age.
59
Flowers are lovely; love is flower-like; Friendship is a sheltering tree; Oh the joys that came down shower-like, Of friendship, love, and liberty, Ere I was old!
Youth and Age.
60
I have heard of reasons manifold Why Love must needs be blind, But this the best of all I hold,— His eyes are in his mind. 4
To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation.
61
What outward form and feature are He guesseth but in part; But what within is good and fair He seeth with the heart.
To a Lady, Offended by a Sportive Observation.
62
Be that blind bard who on the Chian strand, By those deep sounds possessed with inward light, Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssey Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea. 5
Fancy in Nubibus.
63
I counted two-and-seventy stenches, All well defined, and several stinks.
Cologne.
64
The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne; But tell me, nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?
Cologne.
65
Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows; Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.
The Homeric Hexameter. (Translated from Schiller.)
66
In the hexameter rises the fountain’s silvery column, In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.
The Ovidian Elegiac Metre. (From Schiller.)
67
I stood in unimaginable trance And agony that cannot be remembered.
Remorse. Act iv. Sc. 3.
68
The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The power, the beauty, and the majesty That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and watery depths,—all these have vanished; They live no longer in the faith of reason.
Wallenstein. Part i. Act ii. Sc. 4. (Translated from Schiller.)
69
I ’ve lived and loved.
Wallenstein. Part i. Act ii. Sc. 6.
70
Clothing the palpable and familiar With golden exhalations of the dawn.
The Death of Wallenstein. Act i. Sc. 1.
71
Often do the spirits Of great events stride on before the events, And in to-day already walks to-morrow. 6
The Death of Wallenstein. Act v. Sc. 1.
72
Our myriad-minded Shakespeare. 7
Biog. Lit. Chap. xv.
73
A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant’s shoulder to mount on. 8
The Friend. Sec. i. Essay 8.
74
An instinctive taste teaches men to build their churches in flat countries, with spire steeples, which, as they cannot be referred to any other object, point as with silent finger to the sky and star. 9
The Friend. No. 14.
75
Reviewers are usually people who would have been poets, historians, biographers, if they could; they have tried their talents at one or the other, and have failed; therefore they turn critics. 10
Lectures on Shakespeare and Milton, p. 36. Delivered 1811–1812.
76
Schiller has the material sublime.
Table Talk.
77
I wish our clever young poets would remember my homely definitions of prose and poetry; that is, prose,—words in their best order; poetry,—the best words in their best order.
Table Talk.
78
That passage is what I call the sublime dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense.
Table Talk.
79
Iago’s soliloquy, the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignity—how awful it is!
Notes on some other Plays of Shakespeare.

Note 1.
Wordsworth, in his Notes to “We are Seven,” claims to have written this line. [back]

Note 2.
Coleridge says: “For these lines I am indebted to Mr. Wordsworth.” [back]

Note 3.
His favourite sin
Is pride that apes humility.
Robert Southey: The Devil’s Walk. [back]

Note 4.
See Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Quotation 5. [back]

Note 5.
And Iliad and Odyssey
Rose to the music of the sea.
Thalatta, p. 132. (From the German of Stolberg.) [back]

Note 6.
Sed ita a principio inchoatum esse mundum ut certis rebus certa signa præcurrerent (Thus in the beginning the world was so made that certain signs come before certain events).—Cicero: Divinatione, liber i. cap. 52.

Coming events cast their shadows before.—Thomas Campbell: Lochiel’s Warning.

Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present.—Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defence of Poetry. [back]

Note 7.
”A phrase,” says Coleridge, “which I have borrowed from a Greek monk, who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople.” [back]

Note 8.
See Burton, Quotation 5. [back]

Note 9.
See Wordsworth, Quotation 163. [back]

Note 10.
Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic.—Percy Bysshe Shelley: Fragments of Adonais.

You know who critics are? The men who have failed in literature and art.—Benjamin Disraeli (Earl Beaconsfield): Lothair, chap. xxxv. [back]

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