by Coleridge · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A love-sonnet to Asra (Sara Hutchinson) whose ever-welling love, likened to spring-waters through snow, the poet would transmute into a dower of happy life and eternity for her.
Connections
Topoi: Love as Religion Archetypes: Lover Motifs: Water, Spring Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love, Joy Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Are there two things, of all which men possess,
That are so like each other and so near,
As mutual Love seems like to Happiness?
Dear Asra, woman beyond utterance dear!
This Love which ever welling at my heart, 5
Now in its living fount doth heave and fall,
Now overflowing pours thro’ every part
Of all my frame, and fills and changes all,
Like vernal waters springing up through snow,
This Love that seeming great beyond the power 10
Of growth, yet seemeth ever more to grow,
Could I transmute the whole to one rich Dower
Of Happy Life, and give it all to Thee,
Thy lot, methinks, were Heaven, thy age, Eternity!
1801.