With wayworn feet, a pilgrim woe-begone,
Life’s upland steep I journeyed many a day,
And hymning many a sad yet soothing lay,
Beguiled my wandering with the charms of song.
Lonely my heart and rugged was my way,
Yet often plucked I, as I passed along,
The wild and simple flowers of poesy:
And, as beseemed the wayward Fancy’s child,
Entwined each random weed that pleased mine eye.
Accept the wreath, Beloved! it is wild
And rudely garlanded; yet scorn not thou
The humble offering, when the sad rue weaves
With gayer flowers its intermingled leaves,
And I have twin’d the myrtle for thy brow!
It is a lovely sonnet. Lamb likes it with tears in his eyes. His sister has lately been very unwell, confined to her bed, dangerously. She is all his comfort, he hers. They dote on each other. Her mind is elegantly stored; her heart feeling. Her illness preyed a good deal on his spirits, though he bore it with an apparent equanimity as beseemed him who, like me, is a Unitarian Christian, and an advocate for the automatism of man.
I was writing a poem, which when finished you shall see, and wished him to describe the character and doctrines of Jesus Christ for me; but his low spirits prevented him. The poem is in blank verse on the Nativity. I sent him these careless lines, which flowed from my pen extemporaneously:—
TO C. LAMB.[98]
Thus far my sterile brain hath framed the song
Elaborate and swelling: but the heart
Not owns it. From thy spirit-breathing power
I ask not now, my friend! the aiding verse,
Tedious to thee, and from thy anxious thought
Of dissonant mood. In fancy (well I know)
Thou creepest round a dear-loved Sister’s bed
With noiseless step, and watchest the faint look,
Soothing each pang with fond solicitude,
And tenderest tones, medicinal of love.
I too a Sister had, an only Sister—
She loved me dearly, and I doted on her!
On her soft bosom I reposed my cares
And gained for every wound a healing scar.
To her I pour’d forth all my puny sorrows,
(As a sick Patient in his Nurse’s arms),
And of the heart those hidden maladies
That shrink ashamed from even Friendship’s eye.
O! I have woke at midnight and have wept
Because she was not! Cheerily, dear Charles!
Thou thy best friend shalt cherish many a year:
Such high presages feel I of warm hope!
For not uninterested, the dear Maid
I’ve view’d—her Soul affectionate yet wise,
Her polish’d wit as mild as lambent glories
That play around a holy infant’s head.
He knows (the Spirit who in secret sees,
Of whose omniscient and all-spreading Love
Aught to implore were Impotence of mind)
That my mute thoughts are sad before his throne,
Prepar’d, when he his healing pay vouchsafes,
To pour forth thanksgiving with lifted heart,
And praise Him Gracious with a Brother’s Joy!
Wynne is indeed a noble fellow. More when we meet.
Your
S. T. Coleridge.