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] of the Vale! 
  O struggling with the darkness all the night,
  And visited all night by troops of stars,[164]
  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]
  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?