The first stanza of Coleridge’s Love reminds one of the following passage from Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound (Act IV, 406):
His will, with all mean passions, bad delights
And selfish cares, its trembling satellites,
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey,
Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm
Love rules.
Coleridge’s stanza runs as follows:
All thoughts, all passions, all delights
Whatever stirs this mortal frame
All are but ministers of Love
And feed his sacred flame.[192]
Shelley’s sonnet to Ianthe is little more than a transposition of Coleridge’s sonnet to his son. Shelley says:
I love thee, Baby! for thine own sweet sake:
Those azure eyes, that faintly dimpled cheek,
Thy tender frame, so eloquently weak,
Love in the sternest heart of hate might wake;
But more when o’er thy fitful slumber bending
Thy mother folds thee to her wakeful heart,
Whilst love and pity, in her glances blending,
All that thy passive eyes can feel impart:
More, when some feeble lineaments of her,
Who bore thy weight beneath her spotless bosom,
As with deep love I read thy face, recur,—
More dear art thou, O fair and fragile blossom;
Dearest when most thy tender traits express
The image of thy mother’s loveliness.[193]
Coleridge’s runs as follows:
Charles! my slow heart was only sad when first
I scanned that face of feeble infancy:
For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst
All I had been, and all my child might be!
But when I saw it on its mother’s arm,
And hanging at her bosom (she the while
Bent o’er its features with a tearful smile),
Then I was thrilled and melted, and most warm
Impressed a father’s kiss; and all beguiled
Of dark remembrance and presageful fear.
I seemed to see an angel’s form appear—
’Twas even thine, beloved woman mild!
So for the mother’s sake the child was dear
And dearer was the mother for the child.
Coleridge and Shelley made a universal application of a few metaphysical principles acquired in their early years; and on them ground their political and religious views. Poetry, metaphysics, morals and politics mixed themselves forever in their imagination.[194]