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Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Written In Early Youth. The Time,--An Autumnal Evening
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O thou wild fancy, check thy wing! No more
Those thin white flakes, those purple clouds explore!
Nor there with happy spirits speed thy light
Bathed in rich amber-glowing floods of light;
Nor in yon gleam, where slow descends the day,
With western peasants hail the morning ray!
Ah! rather bid the perished pleasures move,
A shadowy train, across the soul of love!
O`er disappointment`s wintry desert fling
Each flower that wreathed the dewy locks of Spring,
When blushing, like a bride, from hope`s trim bower
She leapt, awakened by the pattering shower.

Now sheds the sinking sun a deeper gleam,
Aid, lovely sorceress! aid thy poet`s dream!
With fairy wand O bid the maid arise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes;
As erst when from the Muses` calm abode 
I came, with learning`s meed not unbestowed:
When, as she twined a laurel round my brow,
And met my kiss, and half returned my vow,
O`er all my frame shot rapid my thrilled heart,
And every nerve confessed the electric dart.
O dear conceit! I see the maiden rise,
Chaste joyance dancing in her bright blue eyes,
When first the lark high-soaring swells his throat
Mocks the tired eye, and scatters the loud note,
I trace her footsteps on the accustomed lawn,
I mark her glancing mid the gleams of dawn.
When the bent flower beneath the night-dew weeps,
And on the lake the silver lustre sleeps,
Amid the paly radiance soft and sad
She meets my lonely path in moon-beams clad.
With her along the streamlet`s brink I rove;
With her I list the warblings of the grove;
And seems in each low wind her voice to float
Lone-whispering pity in each soothing note!

Spirits of love! ye heard her name! Obey 
The powerful spell, and to my haunt repair, 
Whither on clust`ring pinions ye are there,
Where rich snows blossom on the myrtle trees,
Or with fond languishment around my fair
Sigh in the loose luxuriance of her hair;
O heed the spell, and hither wing your way,
Like far-off music, voyaging the breeze!
Spirits! to you the infant maid was given,
Formed by the wondrous alchemy of Heaven!
No fairer maid does love`s wide empire know,
No fairer maid e`er heaved the bosom`s snow. 
A thousand loves around her forehead fly;
A thousand loves sit melting in her eye;
Love lights her smile -- in joy`s bright nectar dips
The flamy rose, and plants it on her lips!
Tender, serene, and all devoid of guile,
Soft is her soul, as sleeping infant`s smile:
She speaks! and hark that passion-warbled song--
Still, fancy! still those mazy notes prolong.
Sweet as th` angelic harps, whose rapturous falls
Awake the softened echoes of heaven`s halls!
O (have I sighed) were mine the wizard`s rod,
Or mine the power of Proteus, changeful god!
A flower-entangled arbor I would seem
To shield my love from noontide`s sultry beam:
Or bloom a myrtle, from whose od`rous boughs
My love might weave gay garlands for her brows.
When twilight stole across the fading vale,
To fan my love I`d be the evening gale;
Mourn in the soft folds of her swelling vest,
And flutter my faint pinions on her breast!
On seraph wing I`d float a dream, by night,
To soothe my love with shadows of delight:--
Or soar aloft to be the spangled skies,
And gaze upon her with a thousand eyes!

As when the savage, who his dowsy frame
Had basked beneath the sun`s unclouded frame,
Awakes amid the troubles of the air, 
The skyey deluge, and white lightning`s glare--
Aghast he scours before the tempest`s sweep,
And sad recalls the sunny hour of sleep:--
So tost by storms along life`s wild`ring way
Mine eye reverted views that cloudless day,
When by my native brook I wont to rove
While hope with kisses nursed the infant love.

Dear native brook! like peace, so placidly
Smoothing thro` fertile fields thy current meel!
Dear native brook! where first young poesy
Stared wildly-eager in her noontide dream,
Where blameless pleasures dimple quiet`s cheek,
As water-lilies ripple a slow stream!
Dear native haunts! where virtue still is gay:
Where friendship`s fixed star sheds a mellowed ray
Where love a crown of thornless roses wears:
Where softened sorrow smiles within her tears;
And mem`ry, with a vestal`s chaste employ,
Unceasing feeds the lambent flame of joy!
No more your skylarks melting from the sight
Shall thrill th` attuned heart-string with delight:--
No more shall deck your pensive pleasures sweet
With wreaths of sober hue my evening seat.
Yet dear to fancy`s eye your varied scene
Of wood, hill, dale, and sparkling brook between!
Yet sweet to fancy`s ear the warbled song,
That soars on morning`s wing your vales among.

Scenes of my hope! the aching eye ye leave
Like yon bright hues that paint the clouds of eve!
Tearful and sadd`ning with the saddened blaze 
Mine eye the gleam pursues with wistful gaze;
Sees shades on shades with deeper tint impend,
Till chill and damp the moonless night descend.
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