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beschäftigt. Die letzten neunzehn Jahre seines Lebens verbrachte er zu Highgate, wo er am 25. Juli 1834 starb.

Seine poetischen Werke enthalten: Juvenile Poems, Sibylline Leaves, Odes and Miscellaneous Poems, vermischte, meist lyrische Gedichte: The Rime of the ancient Mariner, ein Balladencyclus : Christabel, ein episch-romantisches Gedicht: Remorse, ein Trauerspiel: Zapolya, ein erzählendes Gedicht: The Fall of Robespierre, ein historisches Drama, eine Uebersetzung von Schillers Wallenstein u. A. m. Eine sehr schöne Ausgabe derselben erschien 1834, in 3 Bänden, London, bei Pickering. Coleridge hat sein Leben selbst geschildert in Biographical sketches of my literary life and opinions by S. T. C. London 1817. 2 Bde.

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Die ausgezeichnetste Eigenthümlichkeit dieses Dichters ist die Zartheit und Tiefe seiner Empfindungen. Keiner hat wie er die Falten des menschlichen Herzens durchspäht und die Stimme der Natur belauscht; er bezaubert daher durch die Wahrheit seiner Gefühle überall da, wo er sich nicht seiner Phantasie überlässt. Selbst die Unregelmässigkeit und absichtliche Nachlässigkeit der Diction und des Rythmus geben seinen Poesieen einen zauberhaften Reiz, denn aller Orten blickt der echte Genius durch. Hat er sich aber einmal den wilden Träumen seiner Muse hingegeben, so ist kein Halt mehr, wie ein ungezügeltes Ross, das der Reiter nicht zu beherrschen vermag, reisst sie ihn mehr als dass sie ihn trägt durch die Reiche der Phantasie und was er sich auf solchem Zuge aneignet und uns darbringt, streift oft nahe an die Ausgeburten des Wahnsinns. Wenn man seine Gedichte liest, so sollte man glauben, sie rührten von zwei Verfassern her, welche Beide zwar gleich grosse Gaben besitzen, von denen der Eine aber im wildesten Rausche, der Andere dagegen nur in Momenten der tiefsten, ruhigsten Empfindung dichtet und die sich mitunter darin gefallen, gemeinschaftlich an demselben Werke zu arbeiten. - Das hier zuerst mitgetheilte Gedicht Love ist nicht allein Coleridge's schönste Leistung, sondern überhaupt eine der schönsten und zartesten Poesieen, welche die englische Literatur aufzuweisen hat.

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I calmed her fears; and she was calm, And told her love with virgin pride; And so I won my Genevieve,

My bright and beauteous bride!

The Nightingale.

No cloud, no relique of the sunken day Distinguishes the west, no long thin slip Of sullen light, no obscure trembling hues. Come, we will rest on this old mossy bridge! You see the glimmer of the stream beneath, But hear no murmuring: it flows silently O'er its soft bed of verdure. All is still, A balmy night! and though the stars be dim, Yet let us think upon the vernal showers That gladden the green earth, and we shall find A pleasure in the dimness of the stars. And hark! the nightingale begins its song, "Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird? O idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy.

But some night-wand'ring man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself,

And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale
Of his own sorrows,) he and such as he
First named these notes a melancholy strain:
And many a poet echoes the conceit;
Poet, who hath been building up the rhyme
When he had better far have stretched his limbs
Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell,

By sun or moonlight, to the influxes
Of shapes, and sounds, and shifting elements,
Surrendering his whole spirit, of his song
And of his fame forgetful! so his fame
Should share in nature's immortality,
A venerable thing! and so his song
Should make all nature lovelier, and itself
Be loved, like nature! But 'twill not be so;
And youths and maidens most poetical
Who lose the deep'ning twilights of the spring
In ball-rooms and hot theatres, they still
Full of meek sympathy must heave their sighs
O'er Philomela's pity-pleading strains.
My friend, and my friend's sister!
learnt
A different lore: we may not thus profane
Nature's sweet voices always full of love

we have

And joyance! 'Tis the merry Nightingale
That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates,
With fast thick warble, his delicious notes!
As he were fearful that an April night
Would be too short for him to utter forth
His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul
Of all its music! and I know a grove
Of large extent, hard by a castle huge,
Which the great lord inhabits not: and so
This grove is wild with tangling underwood,
And the trim walks are broken up, and grass,
Thin grass and king-cups grow within the paths.
But never elsewhere in one place I knew
So many Nightingales: and far and near
In wood and thicket over the wide grove
They answer and provoke each other's songs
With skirmish and capricious passagings,
And murmurs musical, swift jug-jug,

And one low piping sound more sweet than

all

Stirring the air with such an harmony,

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That, should you close your eyes, you might written in the Album at Elbingerode, in

Forget it was not day.

almost

A most gentle maid Who dwelleth in her hospitable home Hard by the castle, and at latest eve (Even like a lady vowed and dedicate To something more than nature in the grove) Glides through the pathways; she knows all their notes,

That gentle maid! and oft, a moment's space,
What time the moon was lost behind a cloud,
Hath heard a pause of silence: till the moon
Emerging, hath awakened earth and sky
With one sensation, and those wakeful birds
Have all burst forth with choral minstrelsy,
As if one quick and sudden gale had swept
An hundred airy harps! And she hath watched
Many a Nightingale perch giddily

On bloss'my twig still swinging from the breeze,
And to that motion tune his wanton song,
Like tipsy joy that reels with tossing head.

Farewell, O warbler! till to-morrow eve,
And you, my friends! farewell, a short farewell!
We have been loitering long and pleasantly.
And now for our dear homes. That strain
again!

Full fain it would delay me! My dear babe,
Who, capable of no articulate sound,
Mars all things with his imitative lisp,
How he would place his hand beside his ear,
His little hand, the small forefinger up,
And bid us listen! and I deem it wise
To make him Nature's playmate. He knows
well

The evening star: and once when he awoke

the Hartz forest.

I stood on Brocken's sovran height, and saw
Woods crowding upon woods, hills over hills,
A surging scene, and only limited
By the blue distance. Heavily my way
Downward I dragg'd through fir-groves ever

more,

Where bright green moss heaves in sepulchral forms

Speckled with sunshine; and, but seldom heard,
The sweet bird's song became a hollow sound;
And the breeze, murmuring indivisibly,
Preserved its solemn murmur most distinct
From many a note of many a waterfall,
And the brook's chatter; 'mid whose islet stones
The dingy kidling with its tinkling bell
Leap'd frolicsome, or old romantic goat
Sat, his white beard slow waving. I moved on
In low and languid mood: for I had found
That outward forms, the loftiest, still receive
Their finer influence from the life within:
Fair ciphers else: fair, but of import vague
Or unconcerning, where the heart not finds
History or prophecy of friend, or child,
Or gentle maid, our first and early love,
Or father, or the venerable name
Of our adored country! O thou Queen,
Thou delegated Deity of Earth,

O dear, dear England! how my longing eye
Turn'd westward, shaping in the steady clouds
Thy sands and high white cliffs!

My native land! Fill'd with the thought of thee this heart was proud,

Yea, mine eye swam with tears: that all the Float here and there, like things astray,

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Henry Hart Milman ward 1791 in London geboren, studirte in Eton und Oxford, ward 1817 Prediger und 1821 Professor der Poesie an der eben genannten Universität, wobei er jedoch sein Pfarramt zu St. Mary in Reading beibehielt, das er gegenwärtig noch verwaltet.

• Ausser mehreren grösseren historischen Werken in Prosa schrieb er, einige kleinere lyrische Poesieen abgerechnet, fast nur dramatische Gedichte wie: Fazio; the Fall of Jerusalem; Belshazzar; the Martyr of Antioch, Anna Boleyn u. A. m.

Milman's Dramen sind mit Ausnahme des Fazio für die Aufführung bestimmt, auch herrscht das lyrische Element zu sehr in ihnen vor. Er ist ein Dichter von edler Gesinnung, tiefem Gefühl und hohem Streben, aber zu kalt und besonnen; er sieht sich, wie Lessing von sich sagte, zu sehr bei dem Schaffen zu und gefällt daher durch seine edle, würdige Sprache und seine Besonnenheit, ohne indessen je den Leser mit sich fortzureissen und zu begeistern.

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