Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The doing evil to avoid an evil Cannot be good.

I've lived and loved.

But still the heart doth need a language, still Doth the old instinct bring back the old names

The intelligible forms of ancient poets, The fair humanities of old religion, The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain, Or forest by slow stream, or pebbly spring, Or chasms and wat'ry depths; …

Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud — We in ourselves rejoice! And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight, All melodies the echoes of that voice, All colours a suffusion from that light.

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud Enveloping the earth.

O lady! we receive but what we give And in our life alone does Nature live.

I may not hope from outward forms to win The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

I see them all so excellently fair, I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!

Yon crescent Moon, as fix'd as if it grew In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue.

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars, That give away their motion to the stars.

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet, no relief In word, or sigh, or tear.

Well! If the Bard was weatherwise, who made The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence.

Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together Thoughts so all unlike each other; To mutter and mock a broken charm, To dally with wrong that does no harm.

A little child, a limber elf, Singing, dancing to itself, A fairy thing with red round cheeks, That always finds, and never seeks, Makes such a vision to the sight As fills a father’s eyes with light.

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,— Like cliffs which had been rent asunder: A dreary sea now flows between.

Alas! they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth; And constancy lives in realms above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth with one we love Doth work like madness in the brain.

Each matin bell, the Baron saith, Knells us back to a world of death.

Her face, oh call it fair, not pale!

That saints will aid if men will call: For the blue sky bends over all!

Behold! her bosom and half her side— A sight to dream of, not to tell!

Her gentle limbs did she undress, And lay down in her loveliness.

Carv'd with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain.

A lady so richly clad as she, Beautiful exceedingly!