by Coleridge · Cluster: Wonder and Gratitude · Sublime · Storm
Abstract
An ode-strophe personifying a mountain waterfall as an ‘unperishing youth’ born of hidden nature, a sublime hymn to ceaseless natural renewal and mystery.
Connections
Topoi: Sublime in Nature Motifs: Water, Nature Themes & Concepts: Sublime, Wonder and Gratitude Forms & Genres: Ode, Fragment Settings: Mountains
Testo integrale / Full text
Unperishing youth!
Thou leapest from forth
The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw
The cradle of the strong one; 5
Never mortal heard
The gathering of his voices;
The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock,
That is lisp’d evermore at his slumberless fountain.
There’s a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil 10
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;
It embosoms the roses of dawn,
It entangles the shafts of the noon,
And into the bed of its stillness
The moonshine sinks down as in slumber, 15
That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven
May be born in a holy twilight!