Poems by Hartley Coleridge With a Memoir of his Life by his Brother. In Two Volumes |
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TO A RED HERRING. |
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 | Poems by Hartley Coleridge |  |
250
TO A RED HERRING.
Wonder of art and nature! ocean-born,Like Aphrodite, Queen of Love and Life,
And those white nymphs that dwell in crystal bowers,
And oft, when ships were rare, and none had burst
Into that ocean which first Cortez view'd
From Darien's heights, beneath the summer moon,
Were wont to weave their labyrinthine dance
On the smooth surface of the sacred sea,
To minstrelsy of kindred sprites of air,—
Child of the waves! whose antique ancestry
Saw unappall'd, say rather with huge joy,
The avenging fountains of the deep broke up,
And the vast hollow globe of waters pour
Dark and continuous o'er the offending earth.
Then did the creatures of the sea rejoice!
The arrowy shark shot swift o'er cities drown'd,
But soon grew sluggish with mere gluttony;
Then herrings fearless stray'd o'er all the world,
251
The finny aristocracy, o'ergorged
With flesh, for fish had no more appetite
Than pious Papist at the end of Lent.
Herrings were happy then, but were not red;
The green effulgence of their scaly suit
Rippled the sunny sea with emerald light
For many a league, what time their countless hosts
Sped from their chill septentrion nursery,
In numbers without number, numberless!
A tribe to which the whole of Adam's race,
By Leuwenhoeck seen through optic lens,
With all whom Malthus, and his sage compeers,
Extinguish'd in the breeding womb of time
By vice and misery—and, oh, ye Gods!
Moral restraint, were but a band élite,
A biped aristocracy, as few
As Protestants in Erin, as the pale
Albino monster upon Afric shore,
As gentlemen in Parliament reform'd,
As honest men—in any place you please.
| Poems by Hartley Coleridge | |