God love you, my dear Southey!
S. T. Coleridge.
A friend of mine hath lately departed this life in a frenzy fever induced by anxiety. Poor fellow, a child of frailty like me! Yet he was amiable. I poured forth these incondite lines[68] in a moment of melancholy dissatisfaction:—
——! thy grave with aching eye I scan,
And inly groan for Heaven’s poor outcast—Man!
’Tis tempest all, or gloom! In earliest youth
If gifted with th’ Ithuriel lance of Truth
He force to start amid the feign’d caress
Vice, siren-hag, in native ugliness;
A brother’s fate shall haply rouse the tear,
And on he goes in heaviness and fear!
But if his fond heart call to Pleasure’s bower
Some pigmy Folly in a careless hour,
The faithless Guest quick stamps th’ enchanted ground,
And mingled forms of Misery threaten round:
Heart-fretting Fear, with pallid look aghast,
That courts the future woe to hide the past;
Remorse, the poison’d arrow in his side,
And loud lewd Mirth to Anguish close allied;
Till Frenzy, frantic child of moping Pain,
Darts her hot lightning-flash athwart the brain!
Rest, injur’d Shade! shall Slander, squatting near,
Spit her cold venom in a dead man’s ear?
’Twas thine to feel the sympathetic glow
In Merit’s joy and Poverty’s meek woe:
Thine all that cheer the moment as it flies,
The zoneless Cares and smiling Courtesies.
Nurs’d in thy heart the generous Virtues grew,
And in thy heart they wither’d! such chill dew
Wan Indolence on each young blossom shed;
And Vanity her filmy network spread,
With eye that prowl’d around in asking gaze,
And tongue that trafficked in the trade of praise!
Thy follies such the hard world mark’d them well.
Were they more wise, the proud who never fell?
Rest, injur’d Shade! the poor man’s grateful prayer,
On heavenward wing, thy wounded soul shall bear!
As oft in Fancy’s thought thy grave I pass,
And sit me down upon its recent grass,
With introverted eye I contemplate
Similitude of soul—perhaps of fate!
To me hath Heaven with liberal hand assign’d
Energic reason and a shaping mind,
The daring soul of Truth, the patriot’s part,
And Pity’s sigh, that breathes the gentle heart—
Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand
Drop Friendship’s precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.
I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,
A dreamy pang in Morning’s fev’rish doze!
Is that pil’d earth our Being’s passless mound?
Tell me, cold Grave! is Death with poppies crown’d?
Tir’d Sentinel! with fitful starts I nod,
And fain would sleep, though pillow’d on a clod!
SONG.
When Youth his fairy reign began[69]
Ere Sorrow had proclaim’d me Man;
While Peace the present hour beguil’d,
And all the lovely Prospect smil’d;
Then, Mary, mid my lightsome glee
I heav’d the painless Sigh for thee!
And when, along the wilds of woe
My harass’d Heart was doom’d to know
The frantic burst of Outrage keen,
And the slow Pang that gnaws unseen;
Then shipwreck’d on Life’s stormy sea
I heav’d an anguish’d Sigh for thee!
But soon Reflection’s hand imprest
A stiller sadness on my breast;
And sickly Hope with waning eye
Was well content to droop and die:
I yielded to the stern decree,
Yet heav’d the languid Sigh for thee!
And though in distant climes to roam,
A wanderer from my native home,
I fain would woo a gentle Fair
To soothe the aching sense of care,
Thy Image may not banish’d be—
Still, Mary! still I sigh for thee!
S. T. C.
God love you.
XXXIX. TO THE SAME.
Autumn, 1794.
Last night, dear Southey, I received a special invitation from Dr. Edwards[70] (the great Grecian of Cambridge and heterodox divine) to drink tea and spend the evening. I there met a councillor whose name is Lushington, a democrat, and a man of the most powerful and Briarean intellect. I was challenged on the subject of pantisocracy, which is, indeed, the universal topic at the University. A discussion began and continued for six hours. In conclusion, Lushington and Edwards declared the system impregnable, supposing the assigned quantum of virtue and genius in the first individuals. I came home at one o’clock this morning in the honest consciousness of having exhibited closer argument in more elegant and appropriate language than I had ever conceived myself capable of. Then my heart smote me, for I saw your letter on the propriety of taking servants with us. I had answered that letter, and feel conviction that you will perceive the error into which the tenderness of your nature had led you. But other queries obtruded themselves on my understanding. The more perfect our system is, supposing the necessary premises, the more eager in anxiety am I that the necessary premises exist. O for that Lyncean eye that can discover in the acorn of Error the rooted and widely spreading oak of Misery! Quære: should not all who mean to become members of our community be incessantly meliorating their temper and elevating their understandings? Qu.: whether a very respectable quantity of acquired knowledge (History, Politics, above all, Metaphysics, without which no man can reason but with women and children) be not a prerequisite to the improvement, of the head and heart? Qu.: whether our Women have not been taught by us habitually to contemplate the littleness of individual comforts and a passion for the novelty of the scheme rather than a generous enthusiasm of Benevolence? Are they saturated with the Divinity of Truth sufficiently to be always wakeful? In the present state of their minds, whether it is not probable that the Mothers will tinge the minds of the infants with prejudication? The questions are meant merely as motives to you, Southey, to the strengthening the minds of the Women, and stimulating them to literary acquirements. But, Southey, there are Children going with us. Why did I never dare in my disputations with the unconvinced to hint at this circumstance? Was it not because I knew, even to certainty of conviction, that it is subversive of rational hopes of a permanent system? These children,—the little Frickers, for instance, and your brothers,—are they not already deeply tinged with the prejudices and errors of society? Have they not learned from their schoolfellows Fear and Selfishness, of which the necessary offsprings are Deceit and desultory Hatred? How are we to prevent them from infecting the minds of our children? By reforming their judgments? At so early an age, can they have felt the ill consequences of their errors in a manner sufficiently vivid to make this reformation practicable? How can we insure their silence concerning God, etc.? Is it possible they should enter into our motives for this silence? If not, we must produce their Obedience by Terror. Obedience? Terror? The repetition is sufficient. I need not inform you that they are as inadequate as inapplicable. I have told you, Southey, that I will accompany you on an imperfect system. But must our system be thus necessarily imperfect? I ask the question that I may know whether or not I should write the Book of Pantisocracy.