Eve following Eve 105
  Dear tranquil Time, when the sweet sense of Home
  Is sweetest!  Moments, for their own sake hail’d,
  And more desired, more precious for thy Song! 
  In silence listening, like a devout child,
  My soul lay passive, by the various strain 110
  Driven as in surges now, beneath the stars
  With momentary [B] stars of her [C] own birth,
  Fair constellated Foam, still darting off
  Into the Darkness; now a tranquil Sea,
  Outspread and bright, yet swelling to the Moon. 115

  And when—­O Friend! my Comforter! my [D] Guide! 
  Strong in thyself and powerful to give strength!—­
  Thy long sustained Song finally clos’d,
  And thy deep voice had ceas’d—­yet thou thyself
  Wert still before mine eyes, and round us both 120
  That happy Vision of beloved Faces—­
  (All whom, I deepliest love—­in one room all!)
  Scarce conscious and yet conscious of its close
  I sate, my Being blended in one Thought,
  (Thought was it? or aspiration? or resolve?) 125
  Absorb’d; yet hanging still upon the Sound—­
  And when I rose, I found myself in Prayer.

S. T. COLERIDGE.

‘Jany’. 1807.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTES ON THE TEXT

[Footnote A:  Different reading on same MS.: 

  ‘To one cast forth, whose Hope had seem’d to die.’

Ed.]

[Footnote B:  Compare, as an illustrative note, the descriptive passage in Satyrane’s first Letter in ‘Biographia Literaria’, beginning, “A beautiful white cloud of foam,” etc.—­S.T.C.]

[Footnote C:  Different reading on same MS., “’my’.”—­Ed.]

[Footnote D:  Different reading on same MS., “’and’.”—­Ed.]

In a MS. copy of ‘Dejection, An Ode’, transcribed for Sir George Beaumont on the 4th of April 1802—­and sent to him, when living with Lord Lowther at Lowther Hall—­there is evidence that the poem was originally addressed to Wordsworth.

The following lines in this copy can be compared with those finally adopted: 

  ’O dearest William! in this heartless mood,
  To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo’d
  All this long eve so balmy and serene
  Have I been gazing on the western sky,’

...

’O William, we receive but what we give: 
And in our life alone does Nature live.’

...

         ’Yes, dearest William!  Yes! 
  There was a time when though my Path was rough
  This Joy within me dallied with distress.’

The MS. copy is described by Coleridge as “imperfect”; and it breaks off abruptly at the lines: 

’Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth
My shaping spirit of Imagination.’