Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose[168] feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
In adoration--upward from thy base
Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears--
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me! rise, O ever rise;
Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth!
Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills!
Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven!
Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.
Here is one little poem I think most valuable, both from its fulness of
meaning, and the form, as clear as condensed, in which that is embodied.
ON AN INFANT
_Which died before baptism._
"_Be_ rather than _be called_ a child of God,"
Death whispered. With assenting nod,
Its head upon its mother's breast
The baby bowed without demur--
Of the kingdom of the blest
Possessor, not inheritor.
Next the father let me place the gifted son, Hartley Coleridge. He was
born in 1796, and died in 1849. Strange, wayward, and in one respect
faulty, as his life was, his poetry--strange, and exceedingly wayward
too--is often very lovely.
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