Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LINES FROM A NOTEBOOK - JULY 1807, by SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE


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LINES FROM A NOTEBOOK - JULY 1807, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Life wakeful over all knew no gradation
Last Line: And with its voice of voices cries out, o!


Life wakeful over all knew no gradation
That Bliss in its excess became a Dream;
For every sense, each thought, & each sensation
Lived in my eye, transfigured not supprest.
And Time drew out his subtle threads so quick,
And with such Spirit-speed & silentness,
That only in the web, of space like Time,
On the still spreading web I still diffused
Lay still commensurate --
For Memory & all undoubting Hope
Sang the same note & in the selfsame Voice,
with each sweet now of my Felicity,
and blended momently,
Like Milk that coming comes & in its easy stream
Flows ever in, upon the mingling milk
in the Babe's murmuring Mouth/
or mirrors each reflecting each/ --

What never is but only is to be
This is not Life --
O Hopeless Hope, and Death's Hypocrisy!
And with perpetual Promise, breaks its Promises. --

The Stars that wont to start, as on a chase,
And twinkling insult on Heaven's darkened Face,
Like a conven'd Conspiracy of Spies
Wink at each other with confiding eyes,
Turn from the portent, all is blank on high,
No constellations alphabet the Sky --
The Heavens one large black Letter only shews,
And as a Child beneath its master's Blows
Shrills out at once its Task and its Affright,
The groaning world now learns to read aright,
And with its Voice of Voices cries out, O!





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