Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.
By Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837). V. I Tremble when with Look BenignSarah Coleridge (18021850)
I
Thou tak’st my offer’d hand in thine,
Lest passion-breathing words of mine
The charm should break:
And friendly smiles be forced to fly,
Like soft reflections of the sky,
Which, when rude gales are sweeping by,
Desert the lake.
The day-star pour’d his hottest beam,
And thou, a cool refreshing stream,
Did’st brightly run:
The trees where thou wert pleased to flow,
Threw out their flowers, a glorious show,
While I, too distant doomed to grow,
Pined in the sun.
A wasted tree, I bow’d my head,
My sallow leaves and blossoms shed
On earth’s green breast:
And silent pray’d the slumbering wind,
The lake, thy tarrying place, might find,
And waft my leaves, with breathings kind,
There, there, to rest.