[515] The muse who presided over astronomy.—Ed.
[516] Compare, in Addison's hymn in The Spectator, No. 465 (August 23), stanza iii. l. 7—
For ever singing as they shine.—Ed.
THE TRIAD[517]
Composed 1828.—Published 1829 (in The Keepsake)
[Written at Rydal Mount. The girls, Edith Southey, my daughter Dora, and Sara Coleridge.—I. F.]
One of the "Poems of the Imagination."—Ed.
Show me the noblest Youth of present time,
Whose trembling fancy would to love give birth;
Some God or Hero, from the Olympian clime
Returned, to seek a Consort upon earth;
Or, in no doubtful prospect, let me see 5
The brightest star of ages yet to be,
And I will mate and match him blissfully.
I will not fetch a Naiad from a flood
Pure as herself—(song lacks not mightier power)
Nor leaf-crowned Dryad from a pathless wood, 10
Nor Sea-nymph glistening from her coral bower;
Mere Mortals bodied forth in vision still,
Shall with Mount Ida's triple lustre fill[518]
The chaster coverts of a British hill.