by Coleridge · Cluster: Memory and Time · Memory · Nostalgia
Abstract
Sonnet addressing the native brook of childhood; memory, nostalgia and the wish to be a careless child again. Form: sonnet.
Connections
Motifs: River, Childhood, Memory, Water Themes & Concepts: Nostalgia, Memory and Time, Maturation and Growth Forms & Genres: Sonnet Settings: Rural England
Testo integrale / Full text
Dear native Brook! wild Streamlet of the West!
How many various-fated years have past,
What happy and what mournful hours, since last
I skimm’d the smooth thin stone along thy breast,
Numbering its light leaps! yet so deep imprest 5
Sink the sweet scenes of childhood, that mine eyes
I never shut amid the sunny ray,
But straight with all their tints thy waters rise,
Thy crossing plank, thy marge with willows grey,
And bedded sand that vein’d with various dyes 10
Gleam’d through thy bright transparence! On my way,
Visions of Childhood! oft have ye beguil’d
Lone manhood’s cares, yet waking fondest sighs:
Ah! that once more I were a careless Child!
? 1793.