Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834)Joy
MY genial spirits fail; | |
And what can these avail | |
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? | |
It were a vain endeavour, | |
Though I should gaze for ever | 5 |
On that green light that lingers in the west: | |
I may not hope from outward forms to win | |
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. | |
O Lady! we receive but what we give, | |
And in our life alone does Nature live: | 10 |
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! | |
And would we ought behold, of higher worth, | |
Than that inanimate cold world allowed | |
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, | |
Ah, from the soul itself must issue forth | 15 |
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud | |
Enveloping the earth— | |
And from the soul itself must there be sent | |
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, | |
Of all sweet sounds the life and element! | 20 |
O pure of heart! thou need’st not ask of me | |
What this strong music in the soul may be! | |
What, and wherein it doth exist | |
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist, | |
This beautiful and beauty-making power. | 25 |
Joy, virtuous Lady! joy that ne’er was given | |
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, | |
Life, and life’s effluence, cloud at once and shower; | |
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, | |
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, | 30 |
A new Earth and new Heaven, | |
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud— | |
Joy is the sweet voice, joy the luminous cloud— | |
We in ourselves rejoice! | |
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, | 35 |
All melodies the echoes of that voice, | |
All colours a suffusion from that light. | |