Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834)

Poet

• And in Life's noisiest hour,
  There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
  The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.
  
  You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within ;
  …
  And looking to the Heaven, that bends above you,
  How oft! I bless the Lot, that made me love you.
  • The Presence of Love (written 1807)

• All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair—
  The bees are stirring— birds are on the wing—
  And WINTER slumbering in the open air,
  Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
  • Work without Hope (1825)

• Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
  For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
  With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
  And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
  WORK WITHOUT HOPE draws nectar in a sieve,
  And HOPE without an object cannot live.
  • Work without Hope (1825)

• Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
  Is a blank lot and hard to bear, no doubt.
  Yet why at others' Wanings should'st thou fret?
  Then only might'st thou feel a just regret,
  Hadst thou withheld thy love or hid thy light
  In selfish forethought of neglect and slight.
  • Duty surviving Self-Love (1826)

• O wiselier then, from feeble yearnings freed,
  While, and on whom, thou may'st —shine on! nor heed
  Whether the object by reflected light
  Return thy radiance or absorb it quite:
  And tho' thou notest from thy safe recess
  Old Friends burn dim, like lamps in noisome air,
  Love them for what they are ; nor love them less,
  Because to thee they are not what they were.
  • Duty surviving Self-Love (1826)

Kubla Khan (published 1816, written 1797? or 1798)

• In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
  A stately pleasure-dome decree:
  Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
  Through caverns measureless to man
  Down to a sunless sea.

• So twice five miles of fertile ground
  With walls and towers were girdled round:
  And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
  Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
  And here were forests ancient as the hills,
  Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

• But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
  Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
  A savage place! as holy and enchanted
  As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
  By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
  And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
  As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
  A mighty fountain momently was forced:

• Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
  Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
  Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail :
  And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
  It flung up momently the sacred river.

• Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
  Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
  Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
  And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
  And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
  Ancestral voices prophesying war!

• The shadow of the dome of pleasure
  Floated midway on the waves;
  Where was heard the mingled measure
  From the fountain and the caves.

• It was a miracle of rare device,
  A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

• A damsel with a dulcimer
  In a vision once I saw:
  It was an Abyssinian maid,
  And on her dulcimer she played,
  Singing of Mount Abora.
  Could I revive within me
  Her symphony and song,
  To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
  That with music loud and long,
  I would build that dome in air,
  That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
  And all who heard should see them there,
  And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
  His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
  Weave a circle round him thrice,
  And close your eyes with holy dread,
  For he on honey-dew hath fed,
  And drunk the milk of Paradise.

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

• Water, water, every where,
  And all the boards did shrink;
  Water, water, every where,
  Nor any drop to drink.

• Alone, alone, all, all alone,
  Alone on a wide wide sea!
  And never a saint took pity on
  My soul in agony.
  
  The many men, so beautiful!
  And they all dead did lie:
  And a thousand thousand slimy things
  Lived on; and so did I.

• Beyond the shadow of the ship,
  I watched the water-snakes:
  They moved in tracks of shining white,
  And when they reared, the elfish light
  Fell off in hoary flakes.
  
  Within the shadow of the ship
  I watched their rich attire:
  Blue, glossy green, and velvet black,
  They coiled and swam; and every track
  Was a flash of golden fire.

• O happy living things! no tongue
  Their beauty might declare:
  A spring of love gushed from my heart,
  And I blessed them unaware:
  Sure my kind saint took pity on me,
  And I blessed them unaware.
  
  The self-same moment I could pray;
  And from my neck so free
  The Albatross fell off, and sank
  Like lead into the sea.

• An orphan's curse would drag to Hell
  A spirit from on high;
  But oh! more horrible than that
  Is a curse in a dead man's eye!
  Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse,
  And yet I could not die.

• The man hath penance done,
  And penance more will do.

• I pass, like night, from land to land;
  I have strange power of speech;
  That moment that his face I see,
  I know the man that must hear me:
  To him my tale I teach.

• Farewell, farewell! but this I tell
  To thee, thou Wedding-Guest!
  He prayeth well, who loveth well
  Both man and bird and beast.
  
  He prayeth best, who loveth best
  All things both great and small;
  For the dear God who loveth us,
  He made and loveth all.

• The Mariner, whose eye is bright,
  Whose beard with age is hoar,
  Is gone: and now the Wedding-Guest
  Turned from the bridegroom's door.
  He went like one that hath been stunned,
  And is of sense forlorn:
  A sadder and a wiser man,
  He rose the morrow morn.