Samuel Taylor Coleridge
First Lines
A lovely form there sate beside my bed,
All look and likeness caught from earth,
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair --
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
At midnight by the stream I roved,
But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Child of my muse! in Barbour's gentle hand
Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,
Encinctured with a twine of leaves,
Hear, my beloved, an old Milesian story! --
How warm this woodland wild recess!
I Love, and he loves me again,
It may indeed be phantasy when I
My eyes make pictures, when they are shut:
O Fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind!
O! It is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing,
On stern Blencartha's perilous height
On the wide level of a mountain's head,
Resembles life what once was deem'd of light,
She gave with joy her virgin breast;
Stop, Christian passer-by! -- Stop, child of God,
Sweet flower! that peeping from thy russet stem
The cloud doth gather, the greenwood roar,
The hour-bell sounds, and I must go;
The shepherds went their hasty way,
The Sun now rose upon the right:
There passed a weary time. Each throat
This be the meed, that thy song creates a thousand-fold echo!
This Hermit good lives in that wood
Unchanged within, to see all changed without,
Up, up! ye dames, and lasses gay!
Upon the mountain's edge with light touch resting,
Verse, a breeze mid blossoms straying,
When thou to my true-love com'st
Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?
