Hartley Coleridge Quotes

We have winning wiles and witcheries, Such incantations as thy sterner wit Did never dream of. Time hath been ere now That Jove hath listen'd to our minstrelsy. Till wrath would seem to drop out of his soul Like a forgotten thing.

With all your music, loud and lustily, With every dainty joy of sight and smell, Prepare a banquet meet to entertain The Lord of Thunder, that hath set you free From old oppression.

Jove is not one half so merciless As thou art to thyself. But fare thee well; Our love is all as stubborn as thy pride, And swift as firm.

True, thy fault is great, But we are many that will plead for thee; We and our sisters, dwellers in the streams That murmur blithely to the joyous mood, And dolefully to sadness. Not a nook In darkest woods but some of us are there, To watch the flowers, that else would die unseen.

The glad sons of the deliver'd earth Shall yearly raise their multitudinous voice, Hymning great Jove, the God of Liberty! Then he grew proud, yet gentle in his pride, And full of tears, which well became his youth, As showers do spring. For he was quickly moved, And joy'd to hear sad stories that we told Of what we saw on earth, of death and woe, And all the waste of time. Then would he swear That he would conquer time; that in his reign It never should be winter; he would have No pain, no growing old, no death at all. And that the pretty damsels, whom we said He must not love, for they would die and leave him, Should evermore be young and beautiful; Or, if they must go, they should come again, Like as the flowers did. Thus he used to prate, Till we almost believed him.

I know it all — All ye would ask. But ne'er shall hope be mine Till the dread secret works its fatal will In daylight visible, with wrath and scorn, And ceaseless memory of forgotten things. Then Jove shall learn what all his sulphurous bolts, Soul-piercing torments, earthquakes, fiery plagues, Disease, and loathsome, black deformity, And all confounding shame, shall ne'er persuade My voice to utter.

Are we not bold to bid a god repent; To break upon his slumbers with our prayers; To watch him day and night; to wear him out With endless supplication? Perhaps to beg His kind attention to a pleasant tale; To cheat him into pity, and conclude Each story with Prometheus?

Where'er ye sojourn, and whatever names Ye are or shall be called; fairies, or sylphs, Nymphs of the wood or mountain, flood or field: Live ye in peace, and long may ye be free To follow your good minds.

She is not fair to outward view
As many maidens be;
Her loveliness I never knew
Until she smiled on me.
Oh! then I saw her eye was bright,
A well of love, a spring of light.

Thou breeze, That mak'st an organ of the mighty sea, Obedient to thy wilful phantasies, Provoke him not to scorn; but soft and low, As pious maid awakes her aged sire, On tiptoe stealing, whisper in his ear The tidings of the young god's victory.

He grew, and grew, A star-bright sign of fated empery; And all conspiring omens led him on To lofty purpose and pre-eminence. The mountain eagles, towering in their pride, Stoop'd at his beck and flock'd about his path, Like the small birds by wintry famine tamed; Or with their dusky and expansive wings Shaded and fann'd him as he slept at noon. The lightnings danced before him sportively, And shone innocuous as the pale cold moon In the clear blue of his celestial eye.

Gentle powers, forbear! Twere worse than all my miseries foreseen Should my huge wreck suck down the friendly skiffs That proffer'd aid. Oh! would that Jupiter Had hurl'd me to the deep of Erebus, Where neither god nor man might pity me.

The mighty Jove did love us. Did? He does. There is a spell of unresisted power In wonder-working weak simplicity, Because it is not fear'd.

On this hapless earth There ’s small sincerity of mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart.

Never till this day Did life disturb the dense eternity Of joyless quiet; never skylark's song, Or storm-bird's prescient scream, or eaglet's cry, Made vital the gross fog. The very light Is but an alien that can find no welcome