| Nicholson & Lee, eds. The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse. 1917. |
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| 70. From ‘Dejection: an Ode’ |
| By Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) |
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| MY genial spirits fail; | |
| And what can these 1 avail | |
| To lift the smothering weight from off my breast? | |
| It were a vain endeavour, | |
| Though I should gaze for ever | 5 |
| On that green light that lingers in the west: | |
| I may not hope from outward forms to win | |
| The passion and the life, whose fountains are within. | |
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| O Lady! we receive but what we give, | |
| And in our life alone does Nature live: | 10 |
| Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud! | |
| And would we aught behold, of higher worth, | |
| Than that inanimate cold world allowed | |
| To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, | |
| Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth | 15 |
| A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud | |
| Enveloping the Earth— | |
| And from the soul itself must there be sent | |
| A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth, | |
| Of all sweet sounds the life and element! | 20 |
| Note 1. The clouds, the stars, and the moon, at which the poet was gazing. [back] |
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