CXXXVIII.  ODE TO MT.  BLANC. (462)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834, was born in Devonshire, England, and was educated at Christ’s Hospital and Cambridge University.  Through poverty he was compelled to enlist in the army, but his literary attainments soon brought him into notice, and he was enabled to withdraw from the distasteful life.

Coleridge’s fame arises chiefly from his poems, of which the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” “Genevieve,” and “Christabel” may be classed among the best of English poetry.  He also wrote a number of dramas, besides numerous essays on religious and political topics.  As a conversationalist Coleridge had a remarkable reputation, and among his ardent admirers and friends may be ranked Southey, Wordsworth, Lovell, Lamb, and De Quincey.  He and his friends Southey and Lovell married sisters, and talked at one time of founding a community on the banks of the Susquehanna.  Although possessing such brilliant natural gifts, Coleridge fell far short of what he might have attained, through a great lack of energy and application, increased by an excessive use of opium. ###

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course?  So long he seems to pause
On thy bald, awful head, O sovran Blanc! 
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form,
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently!  Around thee and above,
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black—­
An ebon mass:  methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge!  But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity! 
O dread and silent Mount!  I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thoughts:  entranced in prayer,
I worshiped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet, beguiling melody,
So sweet we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought—­
Yea, with my life and life’s own secret joy
Till the dilating soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—­there,
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy!  Awake,
Voice of sweet song!  Awake, my heart, awake! 
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran of the vale! 
Oh, struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky, or when they sink—­
Companion of the morning star at dawn,
Thyself Earth’s rosy star, and of the dawn
Coherald—­wake, oh wake, and utter praise! 
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth? 
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light? 
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?