Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, HARTLEY COLERIDGE, by EDWARD JAMES MORTIMER COLLINS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

HARTLEY COLERIDGE, by                    
First Line: Little we know of him whom best we know
Last Line: High in these huge grey hills, whence foaming rivers start.'
Alternate Author Name(s): Collins, Mortimer
Subject(s): Coleridge, Hartley (1796-1849); Poetry & Poets


Little we know of him whom best we know:
Only the spirit's foam doth overflow
In daily converse. Pure and marvellous deep
Its stronger elements must ever sleep
Within the chalice of the human heart;
Those are the noblest who can dwell apart
In their own royalty.
Some few years ago
Helvellyn, shrouded in October snow,
Saw me, a careless student-cottager,
Hiding afar from earth's unending stir
Where a great glen the mighty hills divides.

There, silently, the strong-winged eagle glides;
There many ravens haunt; there dwelt, moreover,
Beside myself, one solitary rover
Of chasm and valley. My small cottage lay
Under great granite barriers which the grey
Hill-Titan planted, by a midnight-hued
Tarn of the mountains: but the turf was strewed
With pine-cones from three Norway giants, tall
Each, as the mast of some high admiral
Around my comrade's dwelling. Down below
The valley widened, and a happy glow
Of brighter sunshine always seemed to break
On the blue bosom of its gemlike lake.

Who was my comrade, knew I not: but we
Over the hills together wandered free;
Our mutton-ham and coffee matutine
Together took; and when the western line
Of sunset amber died o'er mere and wold
Returned together to our haunts of old,
Perspiring, weary, with an appetite
Such as Achilles might have felt at night,
Which made our charr and grouse no common-place delight.

What colloquy we held: of matters human,
Subhuman, superhuman; loving woman;
Old fashioned childhood of its late-left state
Dreaming; stern Death, which keeps inviolate
The coming world; hill-legends that belong
To northern minstrels of barbaric song;
The Erd Gheist, whom our cottage hosts had heard
Uprooting pines above; the royal bird
Whose wide wings seemed a speck in upper air:
Each other's names we knew not -- well aware
(Whatever may be due to social claims)
Minds are of higher consequence than names.
Homer we spake of; and his favorite
The sage Odysseus, whose quick eyes were bright
With no mean wisdom both of heaven and earth.
'You might have been Odysseus' in my mirth
Once said I when, with half-poetic glee,
We had improvised a modern Odyssey.
There was a wondrous sadness in his eye,
As from his ready lips came this reply.

'He was a man of action; I of thought.
Born otherwhere, my life had still been nought
But a vext vision. Not, alas, for me
Brass prows cut furrows in the purple sea.
Well had I loved to roam for evermore;
Destiny binds me to the weary shore.
Well had I loved war's onset; but this arm
Is nerveless, bound by some magician's charm.
The man of action, who must weakly dwell
Under the influence of so strange a spell.
Becomes a rhymer in the wildwood shade:
Of such material are poets made.

'I have not known, nor ever can I know
The passion which in happier hearts may glow
Hot as the noontide: not to cool my drouth
Comes sweet low music from a ruddy mouth;
No dream of tresses thick, of dim brown eyes,
Haunts me all lonely; perfect beauty dies
Out from the mirror of my soul. I feign
Within me, oft, a somewhat loftier strain:
The moonlight through some palace-oriel streams
On silken vesture; and a maiden seems
To listen shyly to my pleading tones:
She fades ev'n while I clasp her; she disowns
The dreamy fiction of an empty heart.
The angry Parcae bid me stay apart
High in these huge grey hills, whence foaming rivers start.'





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