Awake to love and beauty 1 and sometimes 

 'Tis well to be bereft of promised good, 

 That we may lift the soul, and contemplate 

 With lively joy the joys we cannot share. 

 My gentle-hearted Charles ! when the last rook 

 Beat its straight path along the dusky air 

 Homeward, I blest it ! deeming its black wing 

 (Now a dim speck, now vanishing in light) 

 Had cross'd the mighty orb's dilated glory, 

 While thou stoodst gazing ; or when all was still, 

 Flew creaking o'er thy head, and had a charm 

 For thee, my gentle-hearted Charles, to whom 

 No sound is dissonant which tells of life. 



COLERIDGE. 



THE QUESTION 



DREAMED that, as I wandered by the way. 

 Bare winter suddenly was changed to spring. 



And gentle odours led my steps astray. 

 Mixed with a sound of waters murmuring 



Along a shelving bank of turf, which lay 

 Under a copse, and hardly dared to fling 



Its green arms round the bosom of the stream. 



But kissed it and then fled, as thou mightest in dream. 



There grew pied wind-flowers and violets, 

 Daisies, those pearled Arcturi of the earth, 



The constellated flower that never sets ; 



Faint oxlips ; tender bluebells, at whose birth 



The sod scarce heaved ; and that tall flower that wets — 

 Like a child, half in tenderness and mirth — 



Its mother's face with heaven's collected tears. 



When the low wind, its playmate's voice, it hears. 



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