England's Antiphon

Dread Power! whom peace and calmness serve
No less than nature's threatening voice,
If aught unworthy be my choice,
From THEE if I would swerve;
Oh, let thy grace remind me of the light
Full early lost, and fruitlessly deplored;
Which, at this moment, on my waking sight
Appears to shine, by miracle restored:
My soul, though yet confined to earth,
Rejoices in a second birth!
—'Tis past; the visionary splendour fades;
And night approaches with her shades.

Although I have mentioned Wordsworth before Coleridge because he was two years older, yet Coleridge had much to do with the opening of Wordsworth's eyes to such visions; as, indeed, more than any man in our times, he has opened the eyes of the English people to see wonderful things. There is little of a directly religious kind in his poetry; yet we find in him what we miss in Wordsworth, an inclined plane from the revelation in nature to the culminating revelation in the Son of Man. Somehow, I say, perhaps because we find it in his prose, we feel more of this in Coleridge's verse.

Coleridge is a sage, and Wordsworth is a seer; yet when the sage sees, that is, when, like the son of Beor, he falls into a trance having his eyes open, or, when feeling and sight are one and philosophy is in abeyance, the ecstasy is even loftier in Coleridge than in Wordsworth. In their highest moods they seem almost to change places—Wordsworth to become sage, and Coleridge seer. Perhaps the grandest hymn of praise which man, the mouth-piece of Nature, utters for her, is the hymn of Mont Blanc.

HYMN

Before sunrise, in the Vale of Chamouni.

Hast thou a charm to stay the morning star
In his steep course—so long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc?
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form!
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it
As with a wedge! But when I look again,
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer
I worshipped the Invisible alone.

Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my thought,
Yea, with my life and life's own secret joy;
Till the dilating soul, enwrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing—there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!

Awake, my soul! Not only passive praise
Thou owest! Not alone these swelling tears,
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my hymn.

Thou first and chief, sole sovran[163 - The mountain.] of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,
And visited all night by troops of stars,[164 - These two lines are just the symbol for the life of their author.]
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink!
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself earth's rosy star, and of the dawn[165 - From the rose-light on the snow of its peak.]
Co-herald! wake, O wake, and utter praise!
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?

And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death,
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,[166 - They all flow from under the glaciers, fed by their constant melting.]
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered, and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy,
Unceasing thunder, and eternal foam?
And who commanded—and the silence came—
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?[167 - Turning for contrast to the glaciers, which he apostrophizes in the next line.]

Ye ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain—
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!—
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the gates of heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?—
God! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, God!
God! sing, ye meadow-streams, with gladsome voice!
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, God!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest!
Ye eagles, playmates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise.

Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose[168 - Antecedent, peaks.] feet the avalanche, unheard,
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast—