Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, COLERIDGE AT CHAMOUNY, by SILAS WEIR MITCHELL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

COLERIDGE AT CHAMOUNY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I would I knew what ever happy stone
Last Line: Dims the proud glory of its heavenward flight.
Subject(s): Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834); Death; Poetry & Poets; Writing & Writers; Dead, The


I WOULD I knew what ever happy stone
Of all these dateless records, gray and vast,
Keeps silent memory of that sunrise lone
When, lost to earth, the soul of Coleridge passed
From earthly time to one immortal hour:
There thought's faint stir woke echoes of the mind
That broke to thunder tones of mightier power
From depths and heights mysterious, undefined;
As when the soft snows, drifting from the rock,
Rouse the wild clamor of the avalanche shock.

Who may not envy him that awful morn
When marvelling at his risen self he trod,
And thoughts intense as pain were fiercely born,
Till rose his soul in one great psalm to God.
A man to-morrow weak as are the worst,
A man to whom all depths, all heights belong,
Now with too bitter hours of weakness cursed,
Now winged with vigor, as a giant strong
To take our groping hearts with tender hand,
And set them surely where God's angels stand.

On peaks of lofty contemplation raised,
Such as shall never see earth's common son,
High as the snowy altar which he praised,
An hour's creative ecstasy he won.
Yet, in this frenzy of the lifted soul
Mocked him the nothingness of human speech,
When through his being visions past control
Swept, strong as mountain streams.—Alas! to reach
Words equal-winged as thought to none is given,
To none of earth to speak the tongue of heaven.

The eagle-flight of genius gladness hath,
And joy is ever with its victor swoop
Through sun and storm. Companionless its path
In earthly realms, and, when its pinions droop,
Faint memories only of the heavenly sun,
Dim records of ethereal space it brings
To show how haughty was the height it won,
To prove what freedom had its airy wings.
This is the curse of genius, that earth's night
Dims the proud glory of its heavenward flight.





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