Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849)

HOW shall a man foredoomed to lone estate,

Untimely old, irreverendly gray,

Much like a patch of dusky snow in May,

Dead sleeping in a hollow, all too late,—

How shall so poor a thing congratulate

The best completion of a patient wooing,

Or how commend a younger man for doing

What ne’er to do hath been his fault, or fate?

There is a fable, that I once did read,

Of a bad angel that was someway good,

And therefore on the brink of Heaven he stood,

Looking each way, and no way could proceed;

Till at the last he purged away his sin,

By loving all the joy he saw within.