So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my

dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor's face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger's face.
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, Fill up the interspersed vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

60

50

40

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops
fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

1798.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

70

SUNRISE

In my sleep I was fain of their fellowship, fain
Of the live-oak, the marsh, and the main.
The little green leaves would not let me alone
in my sleep;

Up-breathed from the marshes, a message of
range and of sweep,

Interwoven with wafters of wild sea-liberties,
drifting,

Came through the lapped leaves sifting,
sifting,

Came to the gates of sleep.

Then my thoughts, in the dark of the dungeon

keep

Of the Castle of Captives hid in the City of

Sleep,

Upstarted, by twos and by threes assembling;
The gates of sleep fell a-trembling
Like as the lips of a lady that forth falter yes,
Shaken with happiness:

The gates of sleep stood wide.

I have waked, I have come, my beloved! I might not abide:

I have come ere the dawn, O beloved, my live-oaks, to hide

In your gospelling glooms,-to be As a lover in heaven, the marsh my marsh and the sea my sea.

Tell me, sweet burly-barked, man-embodied

Tree

That mine arms in the dark are embracing, dost know

From what fount are these tears at thy feet which flow?

They rise not from reason, but deeper inconsequent deeps.

Reason 's not one that weeps.

What logic of greeting lies

Betwixt dear over-beautiful trees and the rain of the eyes?

O cunning green leaves, little masters! like as ye gloss

All the dull-tissued dark with your luminous darks that emboss

10

The vague blackness of night into pattern

and plan,

So,

(But would I could know, but would I
could know,)

With your question embroidering the dark of

the question of man.

30

So, with your silences purfling this silence of man While his cry to the dead for some knowledge is under the ban,

Under the ban,

So, ye have wrought me

Designs on the night of our knowledge,-yea, ye have taught me,

Ye lispers, whisperers, singers in storms,
Ye consciences murmuring faiths under

forms,

Ye ministers meet for each passion that

grieves,

Friendly, sisterly, sweetheart leaves,

Oh, rain me down from your darks that contain

me

40

Wisdoms ye winnow from winds that pain me,-
Sift down tremors of sweet-within-sweet
That advise me of more than they bring,-repeat
Me the woods-smell that swiftly but now brought

breath

From the heaven-side bank of the river of death,—

Teach me the terms of silence, preach me
The passion of patience,-sift me,-impeach

me,

And there, oh there

As ye hang with your myriad palms upturned in the air,

Pray me a myriad prayer.

My gossip, the owl,-is it thou

That out of the leaves of the low-hanging
bough,

As I pass to the beach, art stirred?
Dumb woods, have ye uttered a bird?

Reverend Marsh, low-couched along the sea,
Old chemist, rapt in alchemy,

Distilling silence,--lo,

That which our father-age had died to know-
The menstruum that dissolves all

matter-thou

Hast found it; for this silence, filling now

The globed charity of receiving space,

This solves us all: man, matter, doubt, disgrace, Death, love, sin, sanity,

Must in yon silence, clear solution lie,

70

Too clear! That crystal nothing who 'll peruse?
The blackest night could bring us brighter news.
Yet precious qualities of silence haunt
Round these vast margins, ministrant.
Oh, if thy soul 's at latter gasp for space,
With trying to breathe no bigger than thy race
Just to be fellowed, when that thou hast found
No man with room, or grace enough of bound,