Part 7 — HARTLEY COLERIDGE

SHE was a queen of noble Nature’s crowning, A smile of hers was like an act of grace; She had no winsome looks, no pretty frowning, Like daily beauties of the vulgar race: But if she smiled, a light was on her face, A clear, cool kindliness, a lunar beam Of peaceful radiance, silvering o’er the stream Of human thought with unabiding glory; Not quite a waking truth, not quite a dream, A visitation, bright and transitory. But she is changed,—hath felt the touch of sorrow, No love hath she, no understanding friend; O grief! when Heaven is forced of earth to borrow What the poor niggard earth has not to lend; But when the stalk is snapt, the rose must bend. The tallest flower that skyward rears its head Grows from the common ground, and there must shed Its delicate petals. Cruel fate, too surely, That they should find so base a bridal bed, Who lived in virgin pride, so sweet and purely. She had a brother, and a tender father, And she was loved, but not as others are From whom we ask return of love,—but rather As one might love a dream; a phantom fair Of something exquisitely strange and rare, Which all were glad to look on, men and maids, Yet no one claim’d—as oft, in dewy glades, The peering primrose, like a sudden gladness, Gleams on the soul, yet unregarded fades;— The joy is ours, but all its own the sadness. ’Tis vain to say—her worst of grief is only The common lot, which all the world have known; To her ’tis more, because her heart is lonely, And yet she hath no strength to stand alone,— Once she had playmates, fancies of her own, And she did love them. They are past away As Fairies vanish at the break of day; And like a spectre of an age departed, Or unsphered Angel wofully astray, She glides along—the solitary-hearted.

SHE is not fair to outward view As many maidens be, Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me; O, then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light! But now her looks are coy and cold, To mine they ne’er reply, And yet I cease not to behold The love-light in her eye: Her very frowns are fairer far Than smiles of other maidens are.

SHE pass’d away like morning dew Before the sun was high; So brief her time, she scarcely knew The meaning of a sigh. As round the rose its soft perfume, Sweet love around her floated; Admired she grew—while mortal doom Crept on, unfear’d, unnoted. Love was her guardian Angel here, But Love to Death resign’d her; Tho’ Love was kind, why should we fear But holy Death is kinder?

WHEN we were idlers with the loitering rills, The need of human love we little noted: Our love was nature; and the peace that floated On the white mist, and dwelt upon the hills, To sweet accord subdued our wayward wills: One soul was ours, one mind, one heart devoted, That, wisely doting, ask’d not why it doted, And ours the unknown joy, which knowing kills. But now I find how dear thou wert to me; That man is more than half of nature’s treasure, Of that fair beauty which no eye can see, Of that sweet music which no ear can measure; And now the streams may sing for others’ pleasure, The hills sleep on in their eternity.