Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Lime

Well, they are gone, and here must I remain,
  This lime-tree bower my prison! I have lost
  Beauties and feelings, such as would have been
  Most sweet to my remembrance even when age
  Had dimm’d mine eyes to blindness! They, meanwhile,
  Friends, whom I never more may meet again,
  On springy heath, along the hill-top edge,
  Wander in gladness, and wind down, perchance,
  To that still roaring dell, of which I told;
 The roaring dell, o’erwooded, narrow, deep,
 And only speckled by the mid-day sun;
 Where its slim trunk the ash from rock to rock
 Flings arching like a bridge;—that branchless ash,
 Unsunn’d and damp, whose few poor yellow leaves
 Ne’er tremble in the gale, yet tremble still,
 Fann’d by the water-fall! and there my friends
 Behold the dark green file of long lank weeds,
 That all at once (a most fantastic sight!)
 Still nod and drip beneath the dripping edge
 Of the blue clay-stone.
 
           Now, my friends emerge
 Beneath the wide wide Heaven—and view again
 The many-steepled tract magnificent
 Of hilly fields and meadows, and the sea,
 With some fair bark, perhaps, whose sails light up
 The slip of smooth clear blue betwixt two Isles
 Of purple shadow! Yes! they wander on
 In gladness all; but thou, methinks, most glad,
 My gentle-hearted Charles! for thou hast pined
 And hunger’d after Nature, many a year,
 In the great City pent, winning thy way
 With sad yet patient soul, through evil and pain
 And strange calamity! Ah! slowly sink
 Behind the western ridge, thou glorious Sun!
 Shine in the slant beams of the sinking orb,
 Ye purple heath-flowers! richlier burn, ye clouds!
 Live in the yellow light, ye distant groves!
 And kindle, thou blue Ocean! So my friend
 Struck with deep joy may stand, as I have stood,
 Silent with swimming sense; yea, gazing round
 On the wide landscape, gaze till all doth seem
 Less gross than bodily; and of such hues
 As veil the Almighty Spirit, when yet he makes
 Spirits perceive his presence.
 
           A delight
 Comes sudden on my heart, and I am glad
 As I myself were there! Nor in this bower,
 This little lime-tree bower, have I not mark’d
 Much that has sooth’d me. Pale beneath the blaze
 Hung the transparent foliage; and I watch’d
 Some broad and sunny leaf, and lov’d to see
 The shadow of the leaf and stem above
 Dappling its sunshine! And that walnut-tree
 Was richly ting’d, and a deep radiance lay
 Full on the ancient ivy, which usurps
 Those fronting elms, and now, with blackest mass
 Makes their dark branches gleam a lighter hue
 Through the late twilight: and though now the bat
 Wheels silent by, and not a swallow twitters,
  Yet still the solitary humble-bee
 Sings in the bean-flower! Henceforth I shall know
 That Nature ne’er deserts the wise and pure;
 No plot so narrow, be but Nature there,
 No waste so vacant, but may well employ
 Each faculty of sense, and keep the heart
 Awake to Love and Beauty! and sometimes
 'Tis well to be bereft of promis’d good,
 That we may lift the soul, and contemplate
 With lively joy the joys we cannot share.
 My gentle-hearted Charles! when the last rook
 Beat its straight path along the dusky air
 Homewards, I blest it! deeming its black wing
 (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light)
 Had cross’d the mighty Orb’s dilated glory,
 While thou stood’st gazing; or, when all was still,
 Flew creeking o’er thy head, and had a charm
 For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom
 No sound is dissonant which tells of Life.

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