Thou first and chief, sole sovran * of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,†
And visited all night by troops of stars,

Or when they climb the sky or when they sink :
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who fill'd thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent ‡ of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad! Who call'd you forth from night and utter death, From dark and icy caverns call'd you forth, § Down those precipitous, black, jagged Rocks,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it.
But I awake, and with a busier mind

And active will self-conscious, offer now

Not, as before, involuntary prayer

And passive adoration!

Hand and voice,

Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!

Awake, ye rocks! Ye forest pines, awake!

Green fields, and icy cliffs! All join my hymn !

1802.

66

* In The Friend of November 16, 1809, are some corrections of this poem-for "sole sovran we are told to read stern monarch."

† And thou, O silent mountain, sole and bare,

O blacker than the darkness all the night—1802.
Father-ib.

§ From darkness let you loose, and icy dens—il'.

For ever shatter'd and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,

Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?

And who commanded (and the silence came,)
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?

*

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow Adown enormous ravines slope amainTorrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice, And stopp'd at once amid their maddest plunge! Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!

Who made you glorious as the gates of Heaven Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun Clothe you with rainbows?

flowers

Who, with living

Of loveliest blue,† spread garlands at your feet?— God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations, Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God! ‡

God sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice!

Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God! §

*Ye that from yon dizzy heights

Adown enormous ravines steeply slope-1802.

+ Who with lovely flowers

Of living blue, &c.-il.

God! God! the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Utter! The ice-plain bursts, and answers God !—ib.
The silent snow-mass, loosening, thunders God !—ib.

Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost ! Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest ! Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm! * Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds! Ye signs and wonders of the element !

Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise !

Thou too, hoar Mount! † with thy sky-pointing peaks,

Oft from whose feet the avalanche, unheard, Shoots downward, glittering through the pure

serene

Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast-
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile § bow'd low
In adoration, upward from thy base

Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,

To rise before me-Rise, O ever rise,

Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth!
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

* Ye dreadless flowers, that fringe th' eternal frost!
Ye wild goats, bounding by the eagle's nest!

Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain blast!-1802. †The list of corrections already alluded to alters this to"And thou, hoar Mount!"

Glittering in-1809.

§ That as once more I raise my head-il.

THE BRITISH STRIPLING'S

WAR-SONG.*

IMITATED FROM STOLBERG.

YES, noble old Warrior! this heart has beat high, Since you told of the deeds which our countrymen wrought;

O lend me the sabre that hung by thy thigh
And I too will fight as my forefathers fought.

Despise not my youth, for my spirit is steel'd
And I know there is strength in the grasp of my

hand;

Yea, as firm as thyself would I march to the field, And as proudly would die for my dear native

land.

In the sports of my childhood I mimick'd the fight, The sound of a trumpet suspended my breath; And my fancy still wander'd by day and by night,

Amid battle and tumult, 'mid conquest and death.

My own shout of onset, when the Armies advance, How oft it awakes me from visions of glory; When I meant to have leapt on the Hero of France, And have dash'd him to earth, pale and breath

less and gory.

* Morning Post, August 24, 1799; Annual Anthology, 1800, signed "Esteesi."

As late thro' the city with banners all streaming
To the music of trumpets the Warriors flew by,
With helmet and scimitars naked and gleaming,
On their proud-trampling, thunder-hoof'd steeds
did they fly;

I sped to yon heath that is lonely and bare,

For each nerve was unquiet, each pulse in alarm; And I hurl'd the mock-lance thro' the objectless air,

And in open-eyed dream proved the strength of my arm.

Yes, noble old Warrior! this heart has beat high, Since you told of the deeds that our countrymen wrought;

O lend me the sabre that hung by thy thigh,

And I too will fight as my forefathers fought!

LINES

WRITTEN IN THE ALBUM AT ELBINGERODE,
IN THE HARTZ FOREST.†

*

I STOOD on Brocken's ‡ sovran height, and saw Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills,

* This poem is reprinted in Coleridge's Literary Remains (vol. i. pp. 276-77), with a few unimportant verbal variations. + Printed in The Morning Post, September 17, 1799, and in The Annual Anthology, vol. ii., Bristol, 1800.

The highest mountain in the Hartz, and indeed in North Germany.