Written at Rydal Mount. I have often regretted that my tour in Ireland, chiefly performed in the short days of October in a Carriage-andfour (I was with Mr. Marshall), supplied my memory with so few images that were new, and with so little motive to write. The lines however in this poem, "Thou too be heard, lone eagle!" were suggested near the Giant's Causeway, or rather at the promontory of Fairhead, where a pair of eagles wheeled above our heads and darted off as if to hide themselves in a blaze of sky made by the setting sun.

ARGUMENT

The Ear addressed, as occupied by a spiritual functionary, in communion with sounds, individual, or combined in studied harmony-Sources and effects of those sounds (to the close of 6th Stanza) The power of music, whence proceeding, exemplified in the idiot-Origin of music, and its effect in early ages-How produced (to the middle of 10th Stanza)-The mind recalled to sounds acting casually and severally-Wish uttered (11th Stanza) that these could be united into a scheme or system for moral interests and intellectual contemplation—(Stanza 12th) The Pythagorean theory of numbers and music, with their supposed power over the motions of the universe-Imaginations consonant with such a theory-Wish expressed (in 11th Stanza) realised, in some degree, by the representation of all sounds under the form of thanksgiving to the Creator(Last Stanza) the destruction of earth and the planetary system-The survival of audible harmony, and its support in the Divine Nature, as revealed in Holy Writ.

I

THY functions are ethereal,

As if within thee dwelt a glancing mind, Organ of vision! And a Spirit aërial Informs the cell of Hearing, dark and blind; Intricate labyrinth, more dread for thought |

To enter than oracular cave;

Strict passage, through which sighs are

brought,

And whispers for the heart, their slave;
And shrieks, that revel in abuse

Of shivering flesh; and warbled air,
Whose piercing sweetness can unloose
The chains of frenzy, or entice a smile
Into the ambush of despair;
Hosannas pealing down the long-drawn
aisle,

And requiems answered by the pulse that beats

Devoutly, in life's last retreats!

II

The headlong streams and fountains
Serve Thee, invisible Spirit, with untired

powers;

Cheering the wakeful tent on Syrian mountains,

They lull perchance ten thousand thousand flowers.

That roar, the prowling lion's Here I am,
How fearful to the desert wide!
That bleat, how tender! of the dam
Calling a straggler to her side.
Shout, cuckoo !-let the vernal soul
Go with thee to the frozen zone;
Toll from thy loftiest perch, lone bell-bird,
toll!

At the still hour to Mercy dear,
Mercy from her twilight throne
Listening to nun's faint throb of holy fear,
To sailor's prayer breathed from a darken-
ing sea,

Or widow's cottage-lullaby.

III

Ye Voices, and ye Shadows

And Images of voice-to hound and horn From rocky steep and rock-bestudded meadows

Flung back, and, in the sky's blue caves,

reborn

On with your pastime! till the church-tower bells

A greeting give of measured glee;
And milder echoes from their cells
Repeat the bridal symphony.
Then, or far earlier, let us rove
Where mists are breaking up or gone,
And from aloft look down into a cove

Besprinkled with a careless quire,
Happy milk-maids, one by one
Scattering a ditty each to her desire,
A liquid concert matchless by nice Art,
A stream as if from one full heart.

IV

Blest be the song that brightens

The blind man's gloom, exalts the veteran's mirth;

Unscorned the peasant's whistling breath, that lightens

His duteous toil of furrowing the green earth.

For the tired slave, Song lifts the languid

oar,

And bids it aptly fall, with chime
That beautifies the fairest shore,
And mitigates the harshest clime.
Yon pilgrims see-in lagging file
They move; but soon the appointed way
A choral Ave Marie shall beguile,
And to their hope the distant shrine
Glisten with a livelier ray:

Nor friendless he, the prisoner of the mine, Who from the well-spring of his own clear breast

Can draw, and sing his griefs to rest.

V

When civic renovation

Dawns on a kingdom, and for needful haste
Best eloquence avails not, Inspiration
Mounts with a tune, that travels like a blast
Piping through cave and battlemented tower;
Then starts the sluggard, pleased to meet
That voice of Freedom, in its power
Of promises, shrill, wild, and sweet!
Who, from a martial pageant, spreads
Incitements of a battle-day,

Thrilling the unweaponed crowd with plumeless heads?—

Even She whose Lydian airs inspire
Peaceful striving, gentle play
Of timid hope and innocent desire
Shot from the dancing Graces, as they move
Fanned by the plausive wings of Love.

VI

How oft along thy mazes,

Regent of sound, have dangerous Passions trod !

O Thou, through whom the temple rings with praises,

And blackening clouds in thunder speak of
God,

Betray not by the cozenage of sense
Thy votaries, wooingly resigned
To a voluptuous influence
That taints the purer, better, mind;
But lead sick Fancy to a harp

That hath in noble tasks been tried;
And, if the virtuous feel a pang too sharp,
Soothe it into patience,-stay

The uplifted arm of Suicide;
And let some mood of thine in firm array
Knit every thought the impending issue
needs,

Ere martyr burns, or patriot bleeds!

VII

As Conscience, to the centre

Of being, smites with irresistible pain
So shall a solemn cadence, if it enter
The mouldy vaults of the dull idiot's brain,
Transmute him to a wretch from quiet
hurled-

Convulsed as by a jarring din;
And then aghast, as at the world
Of reason partially let in

By concords winding with a sway
Terrible for sense and soul !

Or, awed he weeps, struggling to quell dismay.

Point not these mysteries to an Art
Lodged above the starry pole;
Pure modulations flowing from the heart
Of divine Love, where Wisdom, Beauty,
Truth

With Order dwell, in endless youth?

VIII

Oblivion may not cover

All treasures hoarded by the miser, Time. Orphean Insight! truth's undaunted lover, To the first leagues of tutored passion climb, When Music deigned within this grosser sphere

Her subtle essence to enfold,

And voice and shell drew forth a tear
Softer than Nature's self could mould.
Yet strenuous was the infant Age:
Art, daring because souls could feel,
Stirred nowhere but an urgent equipage
Of rapt imagination sped her march

The pipe of Pan, to shepherds

Couched in the shadow of Mænalian pines, Was passing sweet; the eyeballs of the leopards,

That in high triumph drew the Lord of vines,

How did they sparkle to the cymbal's clang!
While Fauns and Satyrs beat the ground
In cadence, and Silenus swang
This way and that, with wild-flowers
crowned.

To life, to life give back thine ear:
Ye who are longing to be rid

Of fable, though to truth subservient, hear
The little sprinkling of cold earth that fell
Echoed from the coffin-lid;

The convict's summons in the steeple's

knell;

"The vain distress-gun," from a leeward

shore,

Repeated-heard, and heard no more!

XI

For terror, joy, or pity,

Vast is the compass and the swell of notes:

From the babe's first cry to voice of regal city,

Rolling a solemn sea-like bass, that floats
Far as the woodlands-with the trill to blend
Of that shy songstress, whose love-tale
Might tempt an angel to descend,
While hovering o'er the moonlight vale.
Ye wandering Utterances, has earth no
scheme,

No scale of moral music--to unite

Powers that survive but in the faintest dream

Of memory?-O that ye might stoop to bear

Chains, such precious chains of sight
As laboured minstrelsies through ages wear!
O for a balance fit the truth to tell
Of the Unsubstantial, pondered well!

XII

By one pervading spirit

Of tones and numbers all things are controlled,

As sages taught, where faith was found to merit

Initiation in that mystery old.

The heavens, whose aspect makes our minds as still

As they themselves appear to be,
Innumerable voices fill

With everlasting harmony;

The towering headlands, crowned with mist,

Their feet among the billows, know
That Ocean is a mighty harmonist;
Thy pinions, universal Air,

Ever waving to and fro,

Are delegates of harmony, and bear Strains that support the Seasons in their round;

Stern Winter loves a dirge-like sound.

XIII

Break forth into thanksgiving,

Ye banded instruments of wind and chords Unite, to magnify the Ever-living,

Your inarticulate notes with the voice of

words!

Nor hushed be service from the lowing

mead,

Nor mute the forest hum of noon; Thou too be heard, lone eagle! freed

From snowy peak and cloud, attune
Thy hungry barkings to the hymn
Of joy, that from her utmost walls
The six-days' Work, by flaming Seraphim
Transmits to Heaven! As Deep to Deep
Shouting through one valley calls,

All worlds, all natures, mood and measure keep

For praise and ceaseless gratulation, poured Into the ear of God, their Lord!

XIV

A Voice to Light gave Being;

To Time, and Man, his earth-born chronicler;

A Voice shall finish doubt and dim foreseeing,
And sweep away life's visionary stir;
The trumpet (we, intoxicate with pride,
Arm at its blast for deadly wars)
To archangelic lips applied,

The grave shall open, quench the stars.
O Silence! are Man's noisy years
No more than moments of thy life?
Is Harmony, blest queen of smiles and tears,
With her smooth tones and discords just,
Tempered into rapturous strife,

Thy destined bond-slave? No! though earth be dust

And vanish, though the heavens dissolve, her stay

Is in the WORD, that shall not pass away. 1828,

INCIDENT AT BRUGÈS

This occurred at Brugès in 1828. Mr. Coleridge, my Daughter, and I made a tour together in Flanders, upon the Rhine, and returned by Holland. Dora and I, while taking a walk along a retired part of the town, heard the voice as here described, and were afterwards informed it was a Convent in which were many English. We were both much touched, I might say affected, and Dora moved as appears in the verses.

IN Bruges town is many a street Whence busy life hath fled; Where, without hurry, noiseless feet

The grass-grown pavement tread. There heard we, halting in the shade Flung from a Convent-tower, A harp that tuneful prelude made To a voice of thrilling power.

They were a present from Miss Jewsbury, of whom mention is made in the note at the end of

the next poem. The fish were healthy to all ap pearance in their confinement for a long time, but at last, for some cause we could not make out, they languished, and, one of them being all but dead, they were taken to the pool under the old Pollard-oak. The apparently dying one lay on its side unable to move. I used to watch it, and about the tenth day it began to right itself, and in a few days more was able to swim about with its companions. For many months they continued to prosper in their new place of abode; but one night by an unusually great flood they