The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge Volume II Part 218

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But lo! again came the slanting sun-shaft, 25 Close by me pois'd on its wing, The sweet Bird sang again, And looking on my tearful Face Did it not say, 'Love has arisen, 30 True Love makes its summer, In the Heart'?

1845

C

_Notebook No. 29, p. 168._

21 Feb. 1825.

MY DEAR FRIEND

I have often amused myself with the thought of a self-conscious Looking-gla.s.s, and the various metaphorical applications of such a fancy--and this morning it struck across the Eolian Harp of my Brain that there was something pleasing and emblematic (of what I did not distinctly make out) in two such Looking-gla.s.ses fronting, each seeing the other in itself, and itself in the other. Have you ever noticed the Vault or snug little Apartment which the Spider spins and weaves for itself, by spiral threads round and round, and sometimes with strait lines, so that its lurking parlour or withdrawing-room is an oblong square? This too connected itself in my mind with the melancholy truth, that as we grow older, the World (alas! how often it happens that the less we love it, the more we care for it, the less reason we have to value its Shews, the more anxious are we about them--alas! how often do we become more and more loveless, as Love which can outlive all change save a change with regard to itself, and all loss save the loss of its _Reflex_, is more needed to sooth us and alone is able so to do!) What was I saying? O, I was adverting to the fact that as we advance in years, the World, that spidery Witch, spins its threads narrower and narrower, still closing on us, till at last it shuts us up within four walls, walls of flues and films, windowless--and well if there be sky-lights, and a small opening left for the Light from above. I do not know that I have anything to add, except to remind you, that _pheer_ or _phere_ for _Mate_, _Companion_, _Counterpart_, is a word frequently used by Spencer (_sic_) and Herbert, and the Poets generally, who wrote before the Restoration (1660), before I say that this premature warm and sunny day, antedating Spring, called forth the following.

Strain in the manner of G. HERBERT, which might be ent.i.tled THE ALONE MOST DEAR: a Complaint of Jacob to Rachel as in the tenth year of her service he saw in her or _fancied_ that he saw symptoms of Alienation.

[*N.B. The Thoughts and Images being modernized and turned into English.*]

(_It was fancy_) [Pencil note by Mrs. Gillman.]

All Nature seems at work. [*Snails*] Slugs leave their lair; The Bees are stirring; Birds are on the wing; And WINTER slumb'ring in the open air Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring.

And [*But*] I the while, the sole unbusy thing.

Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.

Yet well I ken the banks where[1111:1]Amaranths blow Have traced the fount whence Streams of Nectar flow.

Bloom, O ye Amaranths! bloom for whom ye may-- For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams! away!

? _Lip unbrighten'd, wreathless B._ With unmoist Lip and 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.

I speak in figures, inward thoughts and woes Interpreting by Shapes and outward shews: { Where daily nearer me with magic Ties, { What time and where, (wove close with magic Ties Line over line, and thickning as they rise) The World her spidery threads on all sides spin Side answ'ring side with narrow inters.p.a.ce, My Faith (say I; I and my Faith are one) Hung, as a Mirror, there! And face to face (For nothing else there was between or near) One Sister Mirror hid the dreary Wall, { bright compeer But _that_ is broke! And with that { only pheere[1111:2]

I lost my object and my inmost All---- Faith _in_ the Faith of THE ALONE MOST DEAR!

JACOB HODIERNUS.

Ah! me!!

Call the World spider: and at fancy's touch Thought becomes image and I see it such.

With viscous masonry of films and threads Tough as the nets in Indian Forests found It blends the Waller's and the Weaver's trades And soon the tent-like Hangings touch the ground A dusky chamber that excludes the day But cease the prelude and resume the lay

FOOTNOTES:

[1111:1] _Literally_ rendered is Flower Fadeless, or never-fading, from the Greek a NOT and maraino to wither.

[1111:2] Mate, Counterpart.

D

_Note to Line 34 of the_ Joan of Arc _Book II. 1796, pp. 41, 42_.

Line 34. Sir Isaac Newton at the end of the last edition of his Optics supposes that a very subtile and elastic fluid, which he calls aether, is diffused thro' the pores of gross bodies, as well as thro' the open s.p.a.ces that are void of gross matter: he supposes it to pierce all bodies, and to touch their least particles, acting on them with a force proportional to their number or to the matter of the body on which it acts. He supposes likewise, that it is rarer in the pores of bodies than in open s.p.a.ces, and even rarer in small pores and dense bodies, than in large pores and rare bodies; and also that its density increases in receding from gross matter; so for instance as to be greater at the 1/100 of an inch from the surface of any body, than at its surface; and so on. To the action of this aether he ascribes the attractions of gravitation and cohsion, the attraction and repulsion of electrical bodies, the mutual influences of bodies and light upon each other, the effects and communication of heat, and the performance of animal sensation and motion. David Hartley, from whom this account of aether is chiefly borrowed, makes it the instrument of propagating those vibrations or configurative motions which are ideas. It appears to me, no hypothesis ever involved so many contradictions; for how can the same fluid be both dense and rare in the same body at one time? Yet in the Earth as gravitating to the Moon, it must be very rare; and in the Earth as gravitating to the Sun, it must be very dense. For as Andrew Baxter well observes, it doth not appear sufficient to account how the fluid may act with a force proportional to the body to which another is impelled, to a.s.sert that it is rarer in great bodies than in small ones; it must be further a.s.serted that this fluid is rarer or denser in the same body, whether small or great, according as the body to which that is impelled is itself small or great. But whatever may be the solidity of this objection, the following seems unanswerable:

If every particle thro' the whole solidity of a heavy body receive its impulse from the particles of this fluid, it should seem that the fluid itself must be as dense as the very densest heavy body, gold for instance; there being as many impinging particles in the one, as there are gravitating particles in the other which receive their gravitation by being impinged upon: so that, throwing gold or any heavy body upward, against the impulse of this fluid, would be like throwing gold _thro'_ gold; and as this aether must be equally diffused over the whole sphere of its activity, it must be as dense when it impels cork as when it impels gold, so that to throw a piece of cork upward, would be as if we endeavoured to make cork penetrate a medium as dense as gold; and tho'

we were to adopt the extravagant opinions which have been advanced concerning the progression of pores, yet however porous we suppose a body, if it be not all pore, the argument holds equally, the fluid must be as dense as the body in order to give every particle its impulse.

It has been a.s.serted that Sir Isaac Newton's philosophy leads in its consequences to Atheism: perhaps not without reason. For if matter, by any powers or properties _given_ to it, can produce the order of the visible world and even generate thought; why may it not have possessed such properties by _inherent_ right? and where is the necessity of a G.o.d? matter is according to the mechanic philosophy capable of acting most wisely and most beneficently without Wisdom or Benevolence; and what more does the Atheist a.s.sert? if matter possess those properties, why might it not have possessed them from all eternity? Sir Isaac Newton's Deity seems to be alternately operose and indolent; to have delegated so much power as to make it inconceivable what he can have reserved. He is dethroned by Vice-regent second causes.

We seem placed here to acquire a knowledge of _effects_. Whenever we would pierce into the _Adyta_ of Causation, we bewilder ourselves; and all that laborious Conjecture can do, is to fill up the gaps of imagination. We are restless, because _invisible_ things are not the objects of vision--and philosophical systems, for the most part, are received not for their Truth, but in proportion as they attribute to Causes a susceptibility of being _seen_, whenever our visual organs shall have become sufficiently powerful.

E

DEDICATION[1113:1]

Ode on the Departing Year, 1796, pp. [3]-4.

[Vide _ante_, p. 160.]

TO THOMAS POOLE, OF STOWEY.

MY DEAR FRIEND--

Soon after the commencement of this month, the Editor of the Cambridge Intelligencer (a newspaper conducted with so much ability, and such unmixed and fearless zeal for the interests of Piety and Freedom, that I cannot but think my poetry honoured by being permitted to appear in it) requested me, by Letter, to furnish him with some Lines for the last day of this Year. I promised him that I would make the attempt; but almost immediately after, a rheumatic complaint seized on my head, and continued to prevent the possibility of poetic composition till within the last three days. So in the course of the last three days the following Ode was produced. In general, when an Author informs the Public that his production was struck off in a great hurry, he offers an insult, not an excuse. But I trust that the present case is an exception, and that the peculiar circ.u.mstances which obliged me to write with such unusual rapidity give a propriety to my professions of it: _nec nunc eam apud te jacto, sed et ceteris indico; ne quis asperiore lima carmen examinet, et a confuso scriptum et quod frigidum erat ni statim traderem_.[1113:2] (I avail myself of the words of Statius, and hope that I shall likewise be able to say of any weightier publication, what _he_ has declared of his Thebaid, that it had been tortured[1113:3]

with a laborious Polish.)

For me to discuss the _literary_ merits of this hasty composition were idle and presumptuous. If it be found to possess that impetuosity of Transition, and that Precipitation of Fancy and Feeling, which are the _essential_ excellencies of the sublimer Ode, its deficiency in less important respects will be easily pardoned by those from whom alone praise could give me pleasure: and whose minuter criticisms will be disarmed by the reflection, that these Lines were conceived 'not in the soft obscurities of Retirement, or under the Shelter of Academic Groves, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow'.[1114:1] I am more anxious lest the _moral_ spirit of the Ode should be mistaken. You, I am sure, will not fail to recollect that among the Ancients, the Bard and the Prophet were one and the same character; and you _know_, that although I prophesy curses, I pray fervently for blessings. Farewell, Brother of my Soul!

----O ever found the same, And trusted and belov'd![1114:2]

Never without an emotion of honest pride do I subscribe myself Your grateful and affectionate friend, S. T. COLERIDGE.

BRISTOL, _December 26, 1796_.

FOOTNOTES:

[1113:1] Published 4to, 1796: reprinted in _P. and D. W._, 1877, i.