Versos English Samuel Taylor Coleridge 59

English poem

59

by

Listen in the reader

I [S. T. C.] find the following lines among my papers, in my own writing, but whether an unfinished fragment, or a contribution to some friend's production, I know not:--

What boots to tell how o'er his grave She wept, that would have died to save; Little they know the heart, who deem Her sorrow but an infant's dream Of transient love begotten; A passing gale, that as it blows Just shakes the ripe drop from the rose-- That dies and is forgotten. O Woman! nurse of hopes and fears, All lovely in thy spring of years, Thy soul in blameless mirth possessing, Most lovely in affliction's tears, More lovely still than tears suppressing.

Undated. First published in Allsop's Letters, Conversations, &c. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 373.