Throws off the bundle from his back,
Before the door of his own home?

Home-sickness is a wasting pang ;*

This feel I hourly more and more: There's healing only in thy wings,

Thou Breeze that play'st on Albion's shore!

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION. +

Do you ask what the birds say? The sparrow, the dove,

The linnet and thrush say, "I love and I love!" In the winter they're silent-the wind is so strongWhat it says I don't know, but it sings a loud song. But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,

And singing, and loving-all come back together. ["I love, and I love," almost all the birds say From sunrise to star-rise, so gladsome are they !] But the lark is so brimful of gladness and love, The green fields below him, the blue sky above, That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he— "I love my Love, and my Love loves me!" ['Tis no wonder that he's full of joy to the brim, When he loves his Love, and his Love loves him !]

* Is no baby pang ;-1800.

+ Printed in The Morning Post, October 16, 1802, with the following title:-"The Language of Birds: Lines spoken extempore to a little child in early spring."

ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE,

AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDATION NOT TO BATHE. *

GOD be with thee, gladsome Ocean!

How gladly greet I thee once more! Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion, And men rejoicing on thy shore.†

Dissuading spake the mild physician, "Those briny waves for thee are death!" + But my soul fulfill'd her mission,

And lo! I breathe untroubled breath!

Fashion's pining sons and daughters,
That seek the crowd they seem to fly, §
Trembling they approach thy waters;
And what cares Nature if they die?

Me a thousand hopes || and pleasures,
A thousand recollections bland,

* Printed in The Morning Post, September 15, 1801, and there entitled, "Ode after bathing in the sea, contrary to medical advice."

+ Ships, and waves, and endless motion,

And life rejoicing on thy shore.-1801.

Mildly said the mild physician

To bathe me on thy shores were death;-il.

§ That love the City's gilded sty—ib.

VOL. II.

|| Loves-il.

Thoughts sublime, and stately measures,
Revisit on thy echoing strand :*

Dreams (the soul herself forsaking,)
Tearful raptures,† boyish mirth;
Silent adorations, making

A blessed shadow of this Earth!

O ye hopes that stir within me,
Health comes with you from above!
God is with me, God is in me!
I cannot die, if Life be Love.

HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE,

IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI.‡

[Chamouni is one of the highest mountain valleys of the Barony of Faucigny in the Savoy Alps; and exhibits a kind of fairy world, in which the wildest appearances (I had almost said horrors) of Nature alternate with the softest and most beautiful. The chain of Mont Blanc is its boundary; and besides the

* Sounding strand-1801.

† Grieflike transports-il.

First printed in The Morning Post, Saturday, September 11, 1802, with the title of " Chamouni, the Hour before Sunrise, a Hymn;" reprinted with many alterations in The Friend of October 26, 1809.

"The Hymn to Chamouni," says De Quincey (Tait's Magazine, Sept. 1834), "is an expansion of a short poem in stanzas upon the same subject by Frederica Brun, a female poet of Germany, previously known to the world under her maiden

Arvè it is filled with sounds from the Arveiron, which
rushes from the melted glaciers, like a giant, mad with
joy, from a dungeon, and forms other torrents of
snow-water, having their rise in the glaciers which
slope down into the valley. The beautiful gentiana
major, or greater gentian, with blossoms of the
brightest blue, grows in large companies a few steps
from the never-melted ice of the glaciers. I thought
it an affecting emblem of the boldness of human hope,
venturing near, and, as it were, leaning over the brink
of the grave.
Indeed, the whole vale, its every light,
its every sound, must needs impress every mind not
utterly callous with the thought-Who would be, who
could be an Atheist in this valley of wonders! If any
of (my) readers have visited this vale in their journeys
among the Alps, I am confident that they will not find
the sentiments and feelings expressed, or attempted
to be expressed, in the following poem, extravagant.]

HAST thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to

pause

On thy bald awful head,* O sovran Blanc ! †
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base

Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! ‡

name of Münter. The mere framework of the poem is exactly the same. On the other hand, by a judicious amplification of some topics, and by its far deeper tone of lyrical enthusiasm, the dry bones of the German outline have been created by Coleridge into the fulness of life. It is not, therefore, a paraphrase, but a recast of the original."

* Top-1809.

† O Chamouni !-1802. Dread mountain form!-1802. Dread awful form!-1809.

Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,*
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!

O dread and silent Mount! † I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,+

Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer I worshipp'd the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,

So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my
thought,

Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy :
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing-there

As in her natural form, swell'd vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake, Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake! Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn. §

* Deep is the sky and black: transpicuous, deep.-1802. † Form.-Ib. Bodily eye-ib.

§ Yet thou, meantime, wast working on my soul, E'en like some deep enchanting melody,