SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

THIS great genius, whose influence upon taste and opinion has perhaps been greater than that of any other author who has written in the nineteenth century, was born at Ottery St. Mary's, Devonshire, in 1773, and died at Highgate in July, 1834. His poetry exhibits a gorgeous and powerful imagination, a perfect command of language, and extraordinary knowledge of human nature.

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RELIGIOUS MUSINGS."

BLEST are they,

Who in this fleshly world, the elect of Heaven,
Their strong eye darting through the deeds of men,

Adore with steadfast unpresuming gaze

Him, Nature's Essence, Mind, and Energy!
And gazing, trembling, patiently ascend,
Treading beneath their feet all visible things,
As steps, that upward to their Father's throne
Lead gradual-else nor glorified nor loved.
They nor contempt embosom nor revenge;
For they dare know of what may seem deform,
The Supreme Fair, sole Operant ; in whose sight
All things are pure, his strong controlling love
Alike from all educing perfect good.

Their's too celestial courage, inly armed,
Dwarfing Earth's giant brood, what time they muse
On their great Father, great beyond compare!
And marching onwards view high o'er their heads
His waving banners of omnipotence.

They cannot dread created might, who love
God, the Creator!—fair and lofty thought!
It lifts and swells my heart! And as I muse,
Behold! a vision gathers in my soul,
Voices and shadowy shapes, in human guise.
I seem to see the phantom, near, pass by,

Hotly-pursued, and pale! From rock to rock
He bounds with bleeding feet, and through the swamp,
The quicksand, and the groaning wilderness,
Struggles with feebler and yet feebler flight.
But lo! an altar in the wilderness,
And eagerly yet feebly, lo! he grasps

The altar of the living God! and there,

With wan reverted face, the trembling wretch
All wildly listening to his hunter-fiends,

Stands, till the last faint echo of their yell

Dies in the distance. Soon refreshed from Heaven
He calms the throb and tempest of his heart.

His countenance settles; a soft solemn bliss
Swims in his eyes: his swimming eyes upraised,
And Faith's whole armor girds his limbs! And thus,
Transfigured, with a meek and dreadless awc,

A solemn hush of spirit, he beholds

All things of terrible seeming: yea, unmoved
Views e'en the immitigable ministers,

That shower down vengeance on these latter days.

For even these on wings of healing come,

Yea, kindling with intenser Deity;

From the celestial mercy-seat they speed,

And at the renovating wells of love,

Have filled their vials with salutary wrath;

To sickly Nature more medicinal,

Than what sweet balm the weeping good man pours

Into the lone, despoiled, traveller's wounds!

Thus, from th' Elect, regenerate through faith,
Pass the dark passions, and what thirsty cares
Drink up the spirit, and the dim regards
Self-centre. Lo, they vanish! or acquire
New names, new features,-by supernal grace
Enrobed with light, and naturalized in Heaven.
As when a shepherd on a vernal morn,

Through some thick fog creeps timorous with slow foot,
Darkling with earnest eyes he traces out
Th' immediate road, all else of fairest kind

Hid or deformed. But lo! the burning sun!
Touched by th' enchantment of that sudden beam,
Straight the black vapor melteth, and in globes
Of dewy glitter gems each plant and tree;
On every leaf, on every blâde it hangs;
Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays,
And wide around the landscape streams with glory!
There is one Mind, one omnipresent Mind,
Omnific. His most holy name is Love.
Truth of subliming import! with the which
Who feeds and saturates his constant soul,
He from his small particular orbit flies,

With blessed outstarting! From himself he flies,
Stands in the sun, and with no partial gaze
Views all creation; and he loves it all,
And blesses it, and calls it very good!
This is indeed to dwell with the Most High!
The cherubs, and the trembling seraphim
Can press no nearer to th' Almighty's throne.
But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts
Unfeeling of our Universal Sire,

Haply for this, some younger angel now
Looks down on human nature: and, behold!

A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad
Embattling interests on each other rush

With unhelmed rage!

"Tis the sublime of man,

Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves

Parts and proportions of one wondrous whole!

This fraternizes man, this constitutes

Our charities and bearings. But 'tis God

Diffused through all, that doth make all one whole; This the worst superstition, him except

Aught to desire, Supreme reality!

The plenitude and permanence of bliss!

O fiends of superstition! not that oft

The erring priest hath stained with brother's blood Your grisly idols, not for this may wrath

Thunder against you from the Holy One!

But o'er some plain that steameth to the sun, Peopled with death; or, where more hideous trade, Loud laughing, packs his bales of human anguish ;

I will raise up a mourning, O ye fiends!

And curse your spells, that film the eye of faith;
Hiding the present God, whose presence lost,
The moral world's cohesion, we become
An anarchy of spirits, toy-bewitched,
Made blind by lusts, disherited of soul,
No common centre man, no common sire
Knoweth! A sordid solitary thing,

'Mid countless brethren, with a lonely heart,
Through courts and cities the smooth savage roams,
Feeling himself, his own low self the whole;
When he by sacred sympathy might make
The whole one self! self that no alien knows!
Self, far diffused as Fancy's wing can travel!
Self, spreading still oblivious of its own,
Yet all of all possessing! this is faith!
This the Messiah's destined victory!
But first offences needs must come!

Even now

(Black Hell laughs horrible-to hear the scoff!)
Thee to defend, meek Galilæan! Thee

And thy mild laws of love unutterable,
Mistrust and Enmity have burst the bands
Of social peace; and list'ning Treachery lurks,
With pious fraud to snare a brother's life;
And childless widows o'er the groaning land
Wail numberless; and orphans weep for bread;
Thee to defend, dear Saviour of mankind!

Thee, Lamb of God! Thee, blameless Prince of Peace!
From all sides rush the thirsty brood of war;
Austria, and that foul woman of the North,
The lustful murd'ress of her wedded lord:

And he, connatural mind! whom (in their songs
So bards of elder time had haply feigned)
Some fury fondled in her hate to man,

Bidding her serpent hair in mazy surge
Lick his young face, and at his mouth imbreathe
Horrible sympathy! and leagued with these
Each petty German princeling, nursed in gore!
Soul-hardened barterers of human blood!

Death's prime slave merchants! scorpion whips of fate!
Nor least in savagery of holy zeal,

Apt for the yoke, the race degenerate,

Whom Britain erst had blushed to call her sons!

Thee to defend, the Moloch priest prefers

The prayer of hate, and bellows to the herd;

That Deity, accomplice Deity,

In the fierce jealousy of wakened wrath

Will go forth with our armies and our fleets
To scatter the red ruin on their foes!
O blasphemy! to mingle fiendish deeds
With blessedness!

Lord of unsleeping Love,
From everlasting Thou! we shall not die.
These, even these, in mercy didst thou form,
Teachers of good through evil, by brief wrong
Making truth lovely, and her future might
Magnetic o'er the fixed untrembling heart.

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

THE shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly stable-shed,

Where the Virgin-Mother lay:

And now they checked their eager
tread,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung,
A mother's song the Virgin-Mother sung.

They told her how a glorious light,

Streaming from a heavenly throng, Around them shone, suspending night;

While sweeter than a mother's song, Blessed angels heralded the Saviour's birth, Glory to God on high! and peace on earth.