LOVE, HOPE, AND PATIENCE IN EDUCATION[481:1]

O'er wayward childhood would'st thou hold firm rule,
And sun thee in the light of happy faces;
Love, Hope, and Patience, these must be thy graces,
And in thine own heart let them first keep school.
For as old Atlas on his broad neck places [5]
Heaven's starry globe, and there sustains it;—so
Do these upbear the little world below
Of Education,—Patience, Love, and Hope.
[[482]]Methinks, I see them group'd in seemly show,
The straiten'd arms upraised, the palms aslope, 10
And robes that touching as adown they flow,
Distinctly blend, like snow emboss'd in snow.

O part them never! If Hope prostrate lie,
Love too will sink and die.
But Love is subtle, and doth proof derive [15]
From her own life that Hope is yet alive;
And bending o'er, with soul-transfusing eyes,
And the soft murmurs of the mother dove,
Woos back the fleeting spirit, and half supplies;—
Thus Love repays to Hope what Hope first gave to Love. [20]

Yet haply there will come a weary day,
When overtask'd at length
Both Love and Hope beneath the load give way.
Then with a statue's smile, a statue's strength,
Stands the mute sister, Patience, nothing loth, 25
And both supporting does the work of both.

1829.

FOOTNOTES:

[481:1] First published in The Keepsake for 1830: included in P. W., 1834, iii. 381. An MS. version was forwarded to W. Sotheby in an unpublished letter of July 12, 1829. A second MS., dated July 1, 1829, is inscribed in an album now in the Editor's possession, which belonged to Miss Emily Trevenen (the author of Little Derwent's Breakfast, 1839). With regard to the variant of ll. [24-6], vide infra, Coleridge writes (Letter of July 12, 1829):—'They were struck out by the author, not because he thought them bad lines in themselves (quamvis Delia Cruscam fortasse nimis redolere videantur), but because they diverted and retarded the stream of the thought, and injured the organic unity of the composition. Più nel uno is Francesco de Sallez' brief and happy definition of the beautiful, and the shorter the poem the more indispensable is it that the Più should not overlay the Uno, that the unity should be evident. But to sacrifice the gratification, the sting of pleasure, from a fine passage to the satisfaction, the sense of complacency arising from the contemplation of a symmetrical Whole is among the last conquests achieved by men of genial powers.'

LINENOTES:

[Title]] Lines in a Lady's Album in answer to her question respecting the accomplishments most desirable in the Mistress or Governess of a Preparatory School Letter, July 1829: The Poet's Answer, To a Lady's Question respecting the accomplishments most desirable in an instructress of Children Keepsake, 1830.