Perfect him, made imperfect in himself,
  All shall be his:  and he whose soul hath risen 225
  Up to the height of feeling intellect
  Shall want no humbler tenderness; his heart
  Be tender as a nursing mother’s heart;
  Of female softness shall his life be full,
  Of humble cares and delicate desires, 230
  Mild interests and gentlest sympathies.

  Child of my parents!  Sister of my soul! 
  Thanks in sincerest verse have been elsewhere
  Poured out [D] for all the early tenderness
  Which I from thee imbibed:  and ’tis most true 235
  That later seasons owed to thee no less;
  For, spite of thy sweet influence and the touch
  Of kindred hands that opened out the springs
  Of genial thought in childhood, and in spite
  Of all that unassisted I had marked 240
  In life or nature of those charms minute
  That win their way into the heart by stealth
  (Still to the very going-out of youth),
  I too exclusively esteemed that love,
  And sought that beauty, which, as Milton sings, 245
  Hath terror in it. [E] Thou didst soften down
  This over-sternness; but for thee, dear Friend! 
  My soul, too reckless of mild grace, had stood
  In her original self too confident,
  Retained too long a countenance severe; 250
  A rock with torrents roaring, with the clouds
  Familiar, and a favourite of the stars: 
  But thou didst plant its crevices with flowers,
  Hang it with shrubs that twinkle in the breeze,
  And teach the little birds to build their nests 255
  And warble in its chambers.  At a time
  When Nature, destined to remain so long
  Foremost in my affections, had fallen back
  Into a second place, pleased to become
  A handmaid to a nobler than herself, 260
  When every day brought with it some new sense
  Of exquisite regard for common things,
  And all the earth was budding with these gifts
  Of more refined humanity, thy breath,
  Dear Sister! was a kind of gentler spring 265
  That went before my steps.  Thereafter came
  One whom with thee friendship had early paired;
  She came, no more a phantom to adorn
  A moment, [F] but an inmate of the heart,
  And yet a spirit, there for me enshrined 270
  To penetrate the lofty and the low;
  Even as one essence of pervading light
  Shines, in the brightest of ten thousand stars,
  And the meek worm that feeds her lonely lamp
  Couched in the dewy grass. 
                            With such a theme, 275
  Coleridge! with this my argument, of thee
  Shall I be silent?  O capacious Soul! 
  Placed on this earth to love and understand,