CXXII. TO THOMAS POOLE.
Keswick, September 19, 1801.
By a letter from Davy I have learnt, Poole, that your mother is with the Blessed. I have given her the tears and the pang which belong to her departure, and now she will remain to me forever, what she had long been—a dear and venerable image, often gazed at by me in imagination, and always with affection and filial piety. She was the only being whom I ever felt in the relation of Mother; and she is with God! We are all with God!
What shall I say to you! I can only offer a prayer of thanksgiving for you, that you are one who has habitually connected the act of thought with that of feeling; and that your natural sorrow is so mingled up with a sense of the omnipresence of the Good Agent, that I cannot wish it to be other than what I know it is. The frail and the too painful will gradually pass away from you, and there will abide in your spirit a great and sacred accession to those solemn Remembrances and faithful Hopes in which, and by which, the Almighty lays deep the foundations of our continuous Life, and distinguishes us from the Brutes that perish. As all things pass away, and those habits are broken up which constituted our own and particular Self, our nature by a moral instinct cherishes the desire of an unchangeable Something, and thereby awakens or stirs up anew the passion to promote permanent good, and facilitates that grand business of our existence—still further, and further still, to generalise our affections, till Existence itself is swallowed up in Being, and we are in Christ even as He is in the Father.
It is among the advantages of these events that they learn us to associate a keen and deep feeling with all the old good phrases, all the reverend sayings of comfort and sympathy, that belong, as it were, to the whole human race. I felt this, dear Poole! as I was about to write my old
God bless you, and love you for ever and ever!
Your affectionate friend,
S. T. Coleridge.
Would it not be well if you were to change the scene awhile! Come to me, Poole! No—no—no. You have none that love you so well as I. I write with tears that prevent my seeing what I am writing.