Читать книгу The Complete Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Illustrated Edition) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Страница 139

FIRST VERSION, PRINTED IN ‘MORNING CHRONICLE’, DECEMBER 26, 1794

My heart has thank’d thee, BOWLES! for those soft strains,

That, on the still air floating, tremblingly

Wak’d in me Fancy, Love, and Sympathy!

For hence, not callous to a Brother’s pains

Thro’ Youth’s gay prime and thornless paths I went; 5

And, when the darker day of life began,

And I did roam, a thought-bewilder’d man!

Thy kindred Lays an healing solace lent,

Each lonely pang with dreamy joys combin’d,

And stole from vain REGRET her scorpion stings; 10

While shadowy PLEASURE, with mysterious wings,

Brooded the wavy and tumultuous mind,

Like that great Spirit, who with plastic sweep

Mov’d on the darkness of the formless Deep!

VIII

MRS. SIDDONS

As when a child on some long Winter’s night

Affrighted clinging to its Grandam’s knees

With eager wond’ring and perturb’d delight

Listens strange tales of fearful dark decrees

Muttered to wretch by necromantic spell; 5

Or of those hags, who at the witching time

Of murky Midnight ride the air sublime,

And mingle foul embrace with fiends of Hell:

Cold Horror drinks its blood! Anon the tear

More gentle starts, to hear the Beldame tell 10

Of pretty Babes, that lov’d each other dear.

Murder’d by cruel Uncle’s mandate fell:

Even such the shiv’ring joys thy tones impart,

Even so thou, SIDDONS! meltest my sad heart!

December 29, 1794.