His solemn grief, like the slow cloud at sunset,
Was but the veil of purest meditation

Pierced thro' and saturate with the rays of mind.

Within these circling hollies, woodbine-clad—
Beneath this small blue roof of vernal sky-
How warm, how still! Though tears should dim mine

eye,

Yet will my heart for days continue glad,

For here, my love, thou art, and here am I!

Each crime that once estranges from the virtues
Doth make the memory of their features daily
More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit
Can have the passport to our confidence
Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd
Who prize and seek the honest man but as
A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.

A Sober Statement of Human Life, or the
True Medium.

A chance may win what by mischance was lost;
The net that holds not great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crost;

Few all they need, but none have all they wish :
Unmingled joys to no one here befall;
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all!

Translation of a Latin Inscription by the Rev.

W. L. Bowles in Nether Stowey Church.* Depart in joy from this world's noise and strife To the deep quiet of celestial life!

*Literary Remains of S.T.C., vol. i. p. 50.

Depart!-Affection's self reproves the tear Which falls, O honour'd Parent! on thy bier ;Yet Nature will be heard, the heart will swell, And the voice tremble with a last Farewell!

1805.

1825.

1826.

Epilogue to The Rash Conjuror,
An Uncomposed Poem.

We ask and urge-(here ends the story!)
All Christian Papishes to pray

That this unhappy Conjuror may,
Instead of Hell, be but in Purgatory,-
For then there's hope;-

Long live the Pope !*

Sentimental.t

The rose that blushes like the morn
Bedecks the valleys low;

And so dost thou, sweet infant corn,
My Angelina's toe.

But on the rose there grows a thorn
That breeds disastrous woe;

And so dost thou, remorseless corn,
On Angelina's toe.

The Alternative.†

This way or that, ye Powers above me!

I of my grief were rid

Did Enna either really love me,
Or cease to think she did.

*Literary Remains of S.T.C., vol. i. p. 52. + Ib. vol. i. p. 59.

Written on a fly-leaf of a copy of

"Field on the

Church," folio, 1628, under the name of a former possessor of the volume inscribed thus:

"Hannah Scollock, her book, February 10, 1787." This, Hannah Scollock! may have been the case; Your writing therefore I will not erase.

But now this book, once yours, belongs to me,
The Morning Post's and Courier's S.T.C. ;—
Elsewhere in College, knowledge, wit and scholarage
To friends and public known as S. T. Coleridge.
Witness hereto my hand, on Ashly Green,
One thousand, twice four hundred, and fourteen
Year of our Lord-and of the month November
The fifteenth day, if right I do remember.*

Translation of a Fragment of Heraclitus.
Μαινομένῳ στόματι ἀμυριστὰ καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα
φθεγγομένη, &c.

-Not hers

To win the sense by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets;
But by the power of the informing Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.†

"The angel's like a flea,

The devil is a bore;—"

No matter for that! quoth S.T.C.,

I love him the better therefore.‡

* Literary Remains of S.T.C., vol. iii. pp. 57, 58. † lb., vol. iii. p. 419.

talk.

Ib., vol. iv. p. 52. Written in a copy of Luther's Table

EPIGRAMS.

I.

On a late Marriage between an Old Maid and a French Petit Maître.

Though Miss -'s match is a subject of mirth, She consider'd the matter full well,

And wisely preferr'd leading one ape on earth To perhaps a whole dozen in hell.*

II.

On an Amorous Doctor.

From Rufa's eye sly Cupid shot his dart
And left it sticking in Sangrado's heart.
No quiet from that moment has he known,
And peaceful sleep has from his eyelids flown.
And Opium's force, and what is more, alack!
His own orations, cannot bring it back.

In short, unless she pities his afflictions,

Despair will make him take his own prescriptions.*

III.

Of smart pretty fellows in Bristol are numbers, some Who so modish are grown, that they think plain sense cumbersome;

And lest they should seem to be queer or ridiculous, They affect to believe neither God or old Nicholas ! †

* The Watchman, April 2, 1796; Literary Remains of S.T.C., vol. i. pp. 45, 46.

+ The Watchman, ubi suprà (in the course of a Letter signed S. T. Coleridge).

SONNET

On receiving a letter informing me of the birth
of a son.*

When they did greet me father, sudden awe
Weigh'd down my spirit: I retired and knelt
Seeking the throne of grace, but inly felt
No heavenly visitation upwards draw
My feeble mind, nor cheering ray impart.
Ah me! before the Eternal Sire I brought
Th' unquiet silence of confused thought
And hopeless feelings: my o'erwhelmed heart
Trembled, and vacant tears stream'd down my face.
And now once more, O Lord! to thee I bend,
Lover of souls! and groan for future grace,
That ere my babe youth's perilous maze have trod,
Thy overshadowing Spirit may descend,

And he be born again, a child of God!

By many a booby's vengeance bit,
I leave your haunts, ye sons of wit!
And swear by Heaven's blessed light
That Epigrams no more I'll write.
Now hang that * * * * * for an ass
Thus to thrust in his idiot face,
Which, spite of oaths, if e'er I spy,
I write an Epigram-or die!

LABERIUS.

* Enclosed in a letter to Thomas Poole. Printed in the Biographical Supplement to Biographia Literaria (Vide anteà, vol. i. pp. 149-151).

+ Morning Post, January 2, 1798.