Her titles and her honors; now believing,
Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed
With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the
ground

Of obligation, what the rule and whence
The sanction; till, demanding formal proof,
And seeking it in everything, I lost
All feeling of conviction, and, in fine,
Sick, wearied out with contrarieties,
Yielded up moral questions in despair.

This was the crisis of that strong disease, This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I drooped,

Deeming our blessèd reason of least use
Where wanted most: "The lordly attributes
Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed,
"What are they but a mockery of a Being
Who hath in no concerns of his a test

Of good and evil; knows not what to fear
Or hope for, what to covet or to shun;
And who, if those could be discerned, would
yet

Be little profited, would see, and ask
Where is the obligation to enforce?
And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still,
As selfish passion urged, would act amiss;
The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime."

In reconcilement with an utter waste Of intellect; such sloth I could not brook, (Too well I loved, in that my spring of life. Painstaking thoughts, and truth, their dear reward)

But turned to abstract science, and there sought

Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned Where the disturbances of space and time— Whether in matters various, properties Inherent, or from human will and power Derived-find no admission. Then it wasThanks to the bounteous Giver of all good!

That the beloved Sister in whose sight
Those days were passed, now speaking in a
voice

Of sudden admonition-like a brook
That did but cross a lonely road, and now
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every
turn,

Companion never lost through many a league

Maintained for me a saving intercourse

With my true self; for, though bedimmed and changed

Much, as it seemed, I was no further changed

Than as a clouded and a waning moon:
She whispered still that brightness would
return,

She, in the midst of all, preserved me still
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name,
And that alone, my office upon earth;
And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown,
If willing audience fail not, Nature's self,
By all varieties of human love

Assisted, led me back through opening day To those sweet counsels between head and heart

Whence grew that genuine knowledge, fraught with peace,

Which, through the later sinkings of this

cause,

Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now
In the catastrophe (for so they dream,
And nothing less), when, finally to close
And seal up all the gains of France, a Pope
Is summoned in to crown an Emperor-
This last opprobrium, when we see a people,
That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven
For manna, take a lesson from the dog
Returning to his vomit; when the sun
That rose in splendor, was alive, and moved
In exultation with a living pomp

Of clouds—his glory's natural retinue— Hath dropped all functions by the gods bestowed,

And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine,
Sets like an Opera phantom.

Thus, O Friend! 1 Through times of honor and through times of shame

Descending, have I faithfully retraced The perturbations of a youthful mind Under a long-lived storm of great eventsA story destined for thy ear, who now, Among the fallen of nations, dost abide Where Etna, over hill and valley, casts His shadow stretching towards Syracuse, The city of Timoleon! Righteous Heaven! How are the mighty prostrated! They first, They first of all that breathe should have awaked

When the great voice was heard from out the tombs

Of ancient heroes. If I suffered grief
For ill-required France, by many deemed
A trifler only in her proudest day;

1 Coleridge, to whom the poem is addressed.

O ye loud Waves! and O ye Forests high! And O ye Clouds that far above me soared!

Written in February, 1798, and entitled The Recantation; an Ode. Observe that there is neither in Coleridge nor in Wordsworth any recantation of their allegiance to the principle of liberty. His disappointment in France has, however, led Coleridge to the conviction "that those feelings and that grand ideal of Freedom which the mind attains by its contemplation of its individual nature, and of the sublime surrounding objects (see first stanza), do not belong to men as a society, nor can possibly be either gratified or realized under any form of human government, but belong to the individual man, so far as he is pure, and inflamed with the adoration of God in Nature." This attitude, the refuge of political idealists in despair, looks forward to the point of view of Shelley and Byron.

Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! Yea, everything that is and will be free! Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, With what deep worship I have still adored

The spirit of divinest Liberty.

II

When France in wrath her giant-limbs upreared,

And with that oath which smote air, earth, and sea,

Stamped her strong foot and said she would be free,

Bear witness for me, how I hoped and feared!

With what a joy my lofty gratulation Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand, The Monarchs marched in evil day, And Britain join'd the dire array; Though dear her shores and circling ocean, Though many friendships, many youthful loves

'Had swoln the patriot emotion

And flung a magic light o'er all her hills

and groves;

placable, they ranged themselves zealously under their Government; though they neither forgot nor forgave its transgressions, in having first involved them in a war with a people then struggling for its own liberties under a twofold affliction-confounded by inbred faction, and beleaguered by a cruel and imperious external foe. But these remembrances did not vent themselves in reproaches, nor hinder us from being reconciled to our Rulers, when a change or rather a revolution in circumstances had imposed new duties: and, in defiance of local and personal clamor, it may be safely said that the nation united heart and hand with the Government in its resolve to meet the worst, rather than stoop its head to receive that which, it felt, would not be the garland but the yoke of peace. Yet it was an afflicting alternative; and it is not to be denied that the effort if it had the determination, wanted the cheerfulness of duty. Our condition savored too much of a grinding constraint-too much of the vassalage of necessity;-it had too much of fear, and therefore of selfishness, not to be contemplated in the main with rueful emotion. We desponded though we did not despair. In fact, a deliberate and preparatory fortitude-a sedate and stern melancholy, which had no sunshine and was exhilarated only by the lightnings of indignation-this was the highest and best state of moral feeling to which the most noble-minded among us could attain.

But, from the moment of the rising of the people of the Pyrenean peninsula, there was a mighty change; we were instantaneously animated; and, from that moment, the contest assumed the dignity which it is not in the power of any thing but hope to bestow: and, if I may dare to transfer language, prompted by a revelation of the state of being that admits not of decay or change, to the concerns and interests of our transitory planet, from that moment "this corruptible put on incorruption, and this mortal put on immortality." This sudden elevation was on no account more welcomewas by nothing more endeared than by the returning sense which accompanied it of inward liberty and choice, which gratified our moral yearnings, inasmuch as it would give henceforward to our actions as a people, an origination and direction unquestionably moral-as it was free-as it was manifestly in sympathy with the species-as it admitted therefore of fluctuations of gen

erous feeling of approbation and of complacency. We were intellectualized also in proportion; we looked backward upon the records of the human race with pride, and, instead of being afraid, we delighted to look forward into futurity. It was imagined that this new-born spirit of resistance, rising from the most sacred feelings of the human heart, would diffuse itself through many countries; and not merely for the distant future, but for the present, hopes were entertained as bold as they were disinterested and generous.

Never, indeed, was the fellowship of our sentient nature more intimately felt-never was the irresistible power of justice more gloriously displayed than when the British and Spanish Nations, with an impulse like that of two ancient heroes throwing down their weapons and reconciled in the field, cast off at once their aversions and enmities, and mutually embraced each other-to solemnize this conversion of love, not by the festivities of peace, but by combating side by side through danger and under affliction in the devotedness of perfect brotherhood. This was a conjunction which excited hope as fervent as it was rational. On the one side was a nation which brought with it sanction and authority, inasmuch as it had tried and approved the blessings for which the other had risen to contend: the one was a people which, by the help of the surrounding ocean and its own virtues, had preserved to itself through ages its liberty, pure and inviolated by a foreign invader; the other a high-minded nation, which a tyrant, presuming on its decrepitude, had, through the real decrepitude of its Government, perfidiously enslaved. What could be more delightful than to think of an intercourse beginning in this manner? On the part of the Spaniards their love towards us was enthusiasm and adoration; the faults of our national character were hidden from them by a veil of splendor; they saw nothing around us but glory and light; and, on our side, we estimated their character with partial and indulgent fondness;-thinking on their past greatness, not as the undermined foundation of a magnificent building, but as the root of a majestic tree recovered from a long disease, and beginning again to flourish with promise of wider branches and a deeper shade than it had boasted in the fulness of its strength. If in the sensations with which the Spaniards prostrated themselves before the religion of their coun