HARTLEY COLERIDGE.

COLERIDGE, HARTLEY, English poet, son of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born at Clevedon, Somersetshire, September 19, 1796; died at Rydal, Westmoreland, January 6, 1849. He was a child of uncommon promise. In 1815 Hartley Coleridge was entered as a student of Merton College, Oxford; and three years afterward he gained a fellowship in Oriel College, but he soon forfeited the position. He afterward went to Ambleside and opened a school there which proved unsuccessful. Hartley Coleridge wrote much prose and more verse worthy of a place in the records of literature.

ADDRESS TO CERTAIN GOLDFISHES.

RESTLESS forms of living light,
Quivering on your lucid wings,
Cheating still the curious sight

With a thousand shadowings;
Various as the tints of even,
Gorgeous as the hues of heaven,
Reflected on your native streams
In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams!
Harmless warriors clad in mail
Of silver breastplate, golden scale.
Mail of Nature's own bestowing,
With peaceful radiance mildly glowing:
Fleet are ye as fleetest galley,
Or pirate rover sent from Sallee;
Keener than the Tartar's arrow,
Sport ye in your sea so narrow.
Was the Sun himself your sire?
Were ye born of vital fire?

Or of the shade of golden flowers,
Such as we fetch from Eastern bowers,
To mock this murky clime of ours?
Upwards, downwards, now ye glance,
Weaving many a mazy dance;
Seeming still to grow in size

When you would elude our eyes.
Pretty creatures! we might deem
Ye were as happy as ye seem;
As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe,
As light, as loving, and as lithe,
As gladly earnest in your play,
As when ye gleamed in far Cathay.

And yet, since on this hapless earth
There's small sincerity in mirth,
And laughter oft is but an art

To drown the outcry of the heart:
It may be that your ceaseless gambols,
Your wheelings, dartings, divings, rambles,
Your restless roving round and round
The circuit of your crystal bound,
Is but the task of weary pain,

And endless labor dull and vain;

And while your forms are gayly shining,
Your little lives are inly pining!

Nay but still I fain would dream

:

That ye are happy as ye seem.

TO SHAKESPEARE.

THE Soul of man is larger than the sky;
Deeper than ocean or the abysmal dark
Of the unfathomed centre. Like that Ark
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high,
O'er the drowned hills, the human family,

And stock reserved of every living kind,
So, in the compass of the single mind,
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie
That make all worlds. Great Poet, 't was thy art
To know thyself, and in thyself to be
Whate'er love, hate, ambition, destiny,

Or the firm, fatal purpose of the heart

Can make of Man. Yet thou wert still the same, Serene of thought, unhurt by thy own flame.

TO WORDSWORTH.

THERE have been poets that in verse display
The elemental forms of human passions:
Poets have been to whom the fickle fashions,
And all the wilful humors of the day,

Have furnished matters for a polished lay.
And many are the smooth, elaborate tribe
Who, emulous of thee, the shape describe,
And fain would every shifting hue portray

Of restless Nature. But thou, mighty Seer!
"Tis thine to celebrate the thoughts that make
The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake
We to ourselves and to our God are dear.

Of Nature's inner shrine thou art the Priest,
Where most she works when we perceive her least.

STILL A CHILD.

LONG time a child, and still a child, when years
Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I,
For yet I lived like one not born to die;
A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears,
No hope I needed, and I knew no fears.

But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep; and, waking,
I waked to sleep no more; at once o'ertaking
The vanguard of my age, with all arrears

Of duty on my back. Nor child nor man,
Nor youth nor sage, I find my head is gray,
For I have lost the race I never ran:
A rathe December blights my lagging May,
And still I am a child, though I be old;
Time is my debtor for my years untold.

GRAY HAIRS AND WISDOM.

"I THANK my God because my hairs are gray !"
But have gray hairs brought wisdom? doth the flight
Of summer birds, departed while the light

Of life is lingering on the middle way,
Predict the harvest nearer by a day?

Will the rank weeds of hopeless appetite
Droop at the glance and venom of the blight
That made the vermeil bloom, the flush so gay,
Dim and unlovely as a dead man's shroud?
Or is my heart that, wanting hope, has lost
The strength and rudder of resolve at peace?
Is it no longer wrathful, vain and proud?

Is it a Sabbath, or untimely frost,

That makes the labor of the soul to cease?

TO A NEWLY MARRIED FRIEND.

How shall a man foredoomed to lone estate,
Untimely old, irreverently gray,

Much like a patch of dusky snow in May,
Dead-sleeping in a hollow all too late-
How shall so poor a thing congratulate

The blest completion of a patient wooing? Or how commend a younger man for doing What ne'er to do hath been his fault or fate? There is a fable that I once did read,

Of a bad angel that was someway good,
And therefore on the brink of heaven he stood
Looking each way, and no way could proceed;
Until at last he purged away his sin
By loving all the joy he saw within.

THE WAIF OF NATURE.

A LONELY wanderer upon earth am I,

The waif of Nature

- like uprooted weed Borne by the stream, or like a shaken reed,

A frail dependent of the fickle sky;

Far, far away, are all my natural kin:

The mother that erewhile hath hushed my cry

Almost hath grown a mere fond memory.

Where is my sister's smile? my brother's boisterous din?

Ah! nowhere now. A matron grave and sage,

A holy mother is that sister sweet.
And that bold brother is a pastor, meet
To guide, instruct, reprove a sinful age.
Almost I fear, and yet I fain would greet;
So far astray hath been my pilgrimage.

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.

COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR, an English poet and philosopher, born at Ottery St. Mary, England, October 21, 1772; died at Highgate, London, July 25, 1834. A scholarship at Christ Hospital, London, was obtained for the boy. In 1791, he obtained a presentation to Jesus College, Cambridge, where he studied for three years, and finally left without taking his degree. He visited Oxford, where he became acquainted with Robert Southey. The young men formed a scheme for emigrating to the banks of the Susquehanna. The scheme was subsequently abandoned, much to the chagrin of Coleridge. Coleridge married in October, 1795, and from 1796 to 1798 lived at Nether Stowey in Somersetshire. Here was written not a little of the best of the poetry of Coleridge: The "Ode on the Departing Year;" "Fears in Solitude;" "France - an Ode;" "The Ancient Mariner;" the first part of "Christabel," and the tragedy of "Remorse." A few years later Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge were living for a while near each other in the Lake region, and, though differing greatly in all personal and literary characteristics, were popularly grouped together as "The Lake Poets." In the meanwhile, in 1798, Coleridge went to Germany, and resided there for more than a year, plunged into the ocean of German metaphysics, and made his great translation of Schiller's dramas, "The Piccolomini" and "The Death of Wallenstein." He returned to England and for a time made his home with Southey. In 1804 he went to Malta as Assistant Secretary to the Governor. He retained this position only nine months, then returned home, making a brief residence in Italy by the way. In 1810 Coleridge had come to be a victim to the use of opium. In 1815 he was to all appearances a complete wreck, physically and mentally, but by judicious treatment the "opium habit" was ultimately overcome, and within the next ten years he produced the most notable of his prose works. The career of Coleridge as a poet really closed at about the age of twenty-eight. He lived, indeed, thirty-four years more, during which time he wrote much noble. prose. A few short poems and fragments make up all the verse written thereafter by Coleridge. Among the many titles under which his works were published, the following are probably most