Time, Real and Imaginary

An Allegory

On the wide level of a mountain's head,
(I knew not where, but 'twas some faery place)
Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread,
Two lovely children run an endless race,
A sister and a brother!
This far outstripped the other;
Yet ever runs she with reverted face,
And looks and listens for the boy behind:
For he, alas! is blind!
O'er rough and smooth with even step he passed,
And knows not whether he be first or last.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian. He is a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and best known for his poems 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' and 'Kubla Khan'. Coleridge was a close friend of poet William Wordsworth, with whom he collaborated on 'Lyrical Ballads' which marks the beginning of the English Romantic movement.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Kubla Khan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Simple Poetry

To the Rev. George Coleridge

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Simple Poetry

Apologia pro Vita Sua

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Simple Poetry

Fragment, (The body)

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Influence Of Natural Objects

In Calling Forth and Strengthening the Imagination
in Boyhood and Early Youth

Wisdom and Spirit of the Universe!
Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought!
And giv'st to forms and images a breath
And everlasting motion! not in vain,
By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn
Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me
The passions that build up our human soul,
Not with the mean and vulgar works of man,
But with high objects, with enduring things,
With life and nature; purifying thus
The elements of feeling and of thought,
And sanctifying by such discipline
Both pain and fear, until we recognize
A grandeur in the beatings of the heart.
Nor was this fellowship vouchsafed to me
With stinted kindness. In November days,
When vapours rolling down ...

William Wordsworth

Illusions.

I.

As down life's morning stream we glide,
Full oft some Flower stoops o'er its side,
And beckons to the smiling shore,
Where roses strew the landscape o'er:
Yet as we reach that Flower to clasp,
It seems to mock the cheated grasp,
And whisper soft, with siren glee,
"My bloom is not oh not for thee!"


II.

Within Youth's flowery vale I tread,
By some entrancing shadow led
And Echo to my call replies
Yet, as she answers, lo, she flies!
And, as I seem to reach her cell
The grotto, where she weaves her spell
The Nymph's sweet voice afar I hear
So Love departs, as we draw near!


III.

Upon a mountain's dizzy height,
Ambition's temple gleams with light:
Proud forms are moving fair within,
And bid u...

Samuel Griswold Goodrich

My Room. To G.E.M.

'Tis a little room, my friend;
A baby-walk from end to end;
All the things look sadly real,
This hot noontide's Unideal.
Seek not refuge at the casement,
There's no pasture for amazement
But a house most dim and rusty,
And a street most dry and dusty;
Seldom here more happy vision
Than water-cart's blest apparition,
We'll shut out the staring space,
Draw the curtains in its face.

Close the eyelids of the room,
Fill it with a scarlet gloom:
Lo! the walls on every side
Are transformed and glorified;
Ceiled as with a rosy cloud
Furthest eastward of the crowd,
Blushing faintly at the bliss
Of the Titan's good-night kiss,
Which her westward sisters share,--
Crimson they from breast to hair.
'Tis the faintest lends its dye
To...

George MacDonald

Hexameters

Italic sentences below are Samuel Taylor Coleridge's.


William, my teacher, my friend! dear William and dear Dorothea!
Smooth out the folds of my letter, and place it on desk or on table;
Place it on table or desk; and your right hands loosely half-closing,
Gently sustain them in air, and extending the digit didactic,
Rest it a moment on each of the forks of the five-forkéd left hand,
Twice on the breadth of the thumb, and once on the tip of each finger;
Read with a nod of the head in a humouring recitativo;
And, as I live, you will see my hexameters hopping before you.
This is a galloping measure; a hop, and a trot, and a gallop!

        All my hexameters fly, like stags pursued by the staghounds,
        Breathless and panting, and ready to drop, yet flying still on...

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Palaces of the Sidhe

Two small sweet lives together
    From dawn till the dew falls down,
They danced over rock and heather
    Away from the dusty town.

Dark eyes like stars set in pansies,
    Blue eyes like a hero's bold--
Their thoughts were all pearl-light fancies,
    Their hearts in the age of gold.

They crooned o'er many a fable
    And longed for the bright-capped elves,
The faery folk who are able
    To make us faery ourselves.

A hush on the children stealing
    They stood there hand in hand,
For the elfin chimes were pealing
    Aloud in the underland.

And over the grey rock sliding,
    A fiery colour ran,
And out of its thickness gliding
    The twinkling mist of a man--

To-day for the children had fled to
    ...

George William Russell

Mechanophilus

Now first we stand and understand,
And sunder false from true,
And handle boldly with the hand,
And see and shape and do.

Dash back that ocean with a pier,
Strow yonder mountain flat,
A railway there, a tunnel here,
Mix me this Zone with that!

Bring me my horsemy horse? my wings
That I may soar the sky,
For Thought into the outward springs,
I find her with the eye.

O will she, moonlike, sway the main,
And bring or chase the storm,
Who was a shadow in the brain,
And is a living form?

Far as the Future vaults her skies,
From this my vantage ground
To those still-working energies
I spy nor term nor bound.

As we surpass our fathers skill,
Our sons will shame our own;
A thousand things are hidden still

Alfred Lord Tennyson