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]
  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]

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] feet the avalanche, unheard,
  Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
  Into the depth of clouds that veil thy breast—­
  Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
  That, as I raise my head, awhile bowed low
  In adoration—­upward from thy base
  Slow-travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears—­
  Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
  To rise before me! rise, O ever rise;
  Rise like a cloud of incense from the earth! 
  Thou kingly spirit throned among the hills! 
  Thou dread ambassador from earth to heaven! 
  Great hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
  And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun,
  Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.

Here is one little poem I think most valuable, both from its fulness of meaning, and the form, as clear as condensed, in which that is embodied.

  ON AN INFANT

  Which died before baptism.

  “Be rather than be called a child of God,”
  Death whispered.  With assenting nod,
  Its head upon its mother’s breast
    The baby bowed without demur—­
  Of the kingdom of the blest
    Possessor, not inheritor.

Next the father let me place the gifted son, Hartley Coleridge.  He was born in 1796, and died in 1849.  Strange, wayward, and in one respect faulty, as his life was, his poetry—­strange, and exceedingly wayward too—­is often very lovely.  The following sonnet is all I can find room for:—­