Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

High was my lineage, many an age ago
My grandsire nursed the mystic mistletoe,
By Druid shorn for dark primeval rite,
With golden sickle by the pale moonlight,
When forests dank of patriarchal oak,
“That never echo'd to the woodman's stroke,
In boundless contiguity of shade,”
Possess'd the destined seats of wealth and trade.
The dappled deer, the sullen shaggy bear,
The tall elk, bursting from its bosky lair,
And all the natural tribes of earth and air,
All, all, familiar with the gnarled tree,
Did homage to my sire's antiquity.
Had he possess'd a human heart and speech
As sage to know and eloquent to teach
As his dark brethren of Dodona, then
What tales could he have told of beasts and men!

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Of Giant Albion, and his peer in fame,
That to far-jutting Cornwall left his name,—
Of Trojan Brutus, and his progeny,
The boast of many a Welsh long pedigree,
And many a king and chief, forgotten long,
Embalm'd in Geoffrey's prose and Spenser's laureate song:
But mute he was, unable to divine
The lamentable lot of old Locrine;
Nor aught of Camber or of Albinact
Could he relate, nor of poor Lear distract,
Though once, I think, that Lear was fain to house
And sing mad songs beneath my grandsire's boughs:
And sure the kindly tree bemoan'd his grief,
With groaning fibre and with quivering leaf.
The Romans came,—they came, they fought, they slew,
They conquer'd, reign'd awhile, and then withdrew
From Britain's isle. Yet, as wild winds bestrew
The long lanes that they make in close defiles
Of intermingled underwood for miles,
With wrecks and relics of their fatal glee,
And trophies of triumphant anarchy;
So, when the hairy myriads of the North
O'erleap'd the barrier,—when the Pict rush'd forth,

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And Caledonia pour'd from cavern'd rocks,
From all her crankling bays and sinuous lochs,
From purple moor, green shaw, and quaking fen,
Her grisly superfluity of men,—
And not to heal, but aggravate the sore,
Came the red sea-kings from the Saxon shore,
Wave after wave, and blast outhowling blast,
Till all despair'd that any would be last;—
Though shy Civility and stately Form
Or fled or fell before the human storm,
Nor quite effaced were all the steps of Time,
For Druid saw was blent with Runic rhyme,—
The oak, which Briton bards had sung beneath,
And whence the Roman pluck'd his civic wreath,
Was still an oak, and grew in power and pride,
With its old shade, new kingdoms to divide.
My grandsire's story it were long to tell,—
How long he flourish'd, how at last he fell!
Was it his doom in shallow bark to bow
His knotty strength, and form a pirate's prow?
Made he the vast beam of a baron's hall,
Or board smooth-rubb'd for lavish festival?
Or iron-headed ram, to smite the tottering wall?
Ah no! He was a dedicated tree
From the first germ of his nativity.

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For many a year in holy peace he stood,
The tallest of a noble brotherhood;
At length a godly king bestow'd their trunks
On a fraternity of studious monks,—
Good men, that wore the penitential weed.
Unquiet times of such meek men have need.

Long was the age—some thought an age too much—
That I was hallowed from a woman's touch.
I was a mere discomfort of a chair;
Monk did not sit in me, and did not dare:
My wooden arms had never clasped the fair.
My bones were stiff to plague the bones of others.
The long bare legs of those long-praying brothers
In me have left a dell, a hollow dint,
Beyond the date of reminiscent print.
But when bluff Harry rent the British rose
From the old stalk on which her sister grows,
When Luther's trumpet with a voice of storm
Defied the Pope and bid the Church reform,
Then I, alas! was but a bit of wood;
For those who leaned on me, and those that stood,
Or knelt beside me in accustom'd prayer,
Became the pensioners of earth and air.

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Poor wanderers, doom'd from doubting souls to crave
The shelter and the food which late they gave.
While I—last note of a forgotten ditty,
No more a thing of worship, scarce of pity—
Am fain to rest unconsecrated now,
Like a pale votary forced to break her vow,
The humble inmate of a genial room,
Far from monastic pomp, monastic gloom.
I will not say how many men have sat
Between my arms to slumber or to chat;
What flying maid, what panting fugitive,
What sinner breathing the last word—forgive;
What lady-love, that dotes on babe so fresh,
And feels the life in its soft dimpling flesh;
Nor what besides of sorrow or of mirth
I may have witness'd by the glowing hearth.
'Tis true—(I fear not to reveal the truth)—
My later days were gayer than my youth;
Yet may my age for aye respected be,
For one good woman's sake that sat on me.

Cornwall. The Giants Albion and Corineus are memorised by Geoffrey of Monmouth and by Spenser.

Camber gave name to Cambria and Cumberland; Albinact to Albania, the poetic name of Scotland.