Page:Sibylline Leaves (Coleridge).djvu/227

 A melancholy Bird? Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so poor Wretch! fill'd all things with himself And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) 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 stretch'd his limbs Beside a brook in mossy forest-dell, By Sun or Moon-light, 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 lov'd 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