‘In his thoughts there were obscurities,
Wonder, and admiration, things that wrought
Not less than a religion in his heart.’
Something like them had been said before, but they ought to have been retained.
The changes in the sky in this Quantock country are as sudden and strange as in Cumberland. During a walk from Cleeve Abbey to Bicknoller it rained in torrents till within half a mile of the end of my journey. All at once it ceased, and the uniform sheet of rain-cloud broke into loose ragged masses swirling in different directions and variously lighted, the sun almost shining through some of the clefts between them. Cleeve Abbey, lying in the trough of a green valley through which runs a stream, the cloister garth and the Abbot’s seat at the end of it, are most impressive. Under the turf lie the dead monks. A place like this begets half-unconscious dreaming which issues in nothing and is not wholesome. It would be better employment to learn something about the history of the abbey and about its architecture.
Detached Quantock Notes.
Ye Woods! that listen to the night-birds’ singing,
Midway the smooth and perilous slope reclined,
Save where your own imperious branches swinging,
Have made a solemn music of the wind.’
These lines from France were written by Coleridge when he was a little over twenty-five years old. In the combination of two gifts, music and meaning, he is hardly surpassable at his best by any poet. Not an atom of meaning is sacrificed to gain a melody: in fact the melody adds to the meaning.
Here is another example showing how the poetic form with Coleridge is not a hindrance to expression, but aids it.
Gentle woman, for thy voice remeasures
Whatever tones and melancholy pleasures
The things of Nature utter; birds or trees,
Or moan of ocean-gale in weedy caves,
Or where the stiff grass ’mid the heath-plant waves,
Murmur and music thin of sudden breeze.’
His similitudes are not mere external comparisons; the objects compared become modes of unity. ‘A brisk gale and the foam that peopled the alive [italics C.’s] sea, most interestingly combined with the number of white seagulls, that, repeatedly, it seemed as if the foam-spit had taken life and wing, and had flown up.’
The intimations which are but whispered, the Presences which are but half-disclosed, are those which we should intently obey. The coarsely obvious has its own strength.