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Samuel Taylor Coleridge - To A Young Lady, With A Poem On The French Revolution
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Much on my early youth I love to dwell,
Ere yet I bade that friendly dome farewell,
Where first, beneath the echoing cloisters, pale,
I heard of guilt and wondered at the tale!
Yet tho` the hours flew by on careless wing,
Full heavily of sorrow would I sing.
Aye as the star of evening flung its beam
In broken radiance on the wavy stream,
My soul amid the pensive twilight gloom
Mourned with the breeze, O, Lee Boo! o`er thy tomb.
Where`er I wanderd, pity still was near,
Breathed from the heart and glistened in the tear:
No knell that tolled, but filled my anxious eye,
And suffering nature wept that one should die!

Thus to sad sympathies I soothed my breast,
Calm, as the rainbow in the weeping west:
When slumb`ring freedom roused by high disdain
With giant fury burst her triple chain!
Fierce on her front the blasting dog-star glowed;
Her banners like a midnight meteor flowed;
Amid the yelling of the storm-rent skies
She came, and scattered battles from her eyes!
Then exultation waked the patriot fire
And swept with wilder hand the Alcaean lyre:
Red from the tyrant`s wound I shook the lance,
And strode in joy the reeking plains of France!
Fall`n is th` oppressor, friendless, ghastly, low, 
And my heart aches tho` mercy struck the blow.
With wearied thought once more I see the shade,
Where peaceful virtue weaves the myrtle braid. 
And O! if eyes, whose holy glances roll,
Swift messengers, and eloquent of soul; 
If smiles more winning, and a gentler mien,
Than the love-wildered maniac`s brain hath seen
Shaping celestial forms in vacant air,
If these demand th` impassioned poet`s care--
If mirth, and softened sense, and wit refined,
The blameless features of a lovely mind;
Then haply shall my trembling hand assign
No fading wreath beauty`s saintly shrine.
Nor, Sara! thou these early flowers refuse----
Ne`er lurked the snake beneath their simple hues,
No purple bloom the child of nature brings
From flatt`ry`s night-shade: as he feels, he sings.
Sept. 1794.
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