O means that I am perplexed and have no opinion.
I, with which how can we utter “Our Father”?
CCXX. TO J. H. GREEN.
Spring Garden Coffee House, [May 2, 1818.]
My dear Sir,—Having been detained here till the present hour, and under requisition for Monday morning early, I have decided on not returning to Highgate in the interim. I propose, therefore, to have the pleasure of passing the fore-dinner hours, from eleven o’clock to-morrow morning, with you in Lincoln’s Inn Square, unless I should hear from you to the contrary.
The Cotton-children Bill[166] (an odd irony to children bred up in cotton!) which has passed the House of Commons, would not, I suspect, have been discussed at all in the House of Lords, but have been quietly assented to, had it not afforded that Scotch coxcomb, the plebeian Earl of Lauderdale,[167] too tempting an occasion for displaying his muddy three inch depths in the gutter (? Guttur) of his Political Economy. Whether some half-score of rich capitalists are to be prevented from suborning suicide and perpetuating infanticide and soul-murder is, forsooth, the most perplexing question which has ever called forth his determining faculties, accustomed as they are well known to have been, to grappling with difficulties. In short, he wants to make a speech almost as much as I do to have a release signed by conscience from the duty of making or anticipating answers to such speeches.
O when the heart is deaf and blind, how blear
The lynx’s eye! how dull the mould-warp’s ear!
Verily the World is mighty! and for all but the few the orb of Truth labours under eclipse from the shadow of the world!
With kind respects to Mrs. Green, believe me, my dear sir, with sincere and affectionate esteem,
Yours,
S. T. Coleridge.