by Coleridge · Cluster: Unrequited Frustrated Love · Unattainable Beloved · Petrarchan Sonnet
Abstract
A lyric on flute-music waking memory and hope and dreams of retirement with the beloved in Freedom’s dell; themes of music, love, and rural retreat.
Connections
Topoi: Pastoral Retreat Motifs: Music and Song, Memory Themes & Concepts: Romantic Love Forms & Genres: Lyric
Testo integrale / Full text
I
Hush! ye clamorous Cares! be mute!
Again, dear Harmonist! again
Thro’ the hollow of thy flute
Breathe that passion-warbled strain:
Till Memory each form shall bring 5
The loveliest of her shadowy throng;
And Hope, that soars on sky-lark wing,
Carol wild her gladdest song!
II
O skill’d with magic spell to roll
The thrilling tones, that concentrate the soul! 10
Breathe thro’ thy flute those tender notes again,
While near thee sits the chaste-eyed Maiden mild;
And bid her raise the Poet’s kindred strain
In soft impassion’d voice, correctly wild.
III
In Freedom’s UNDIVIDED dell, 15
Where Toil and Health with mellow’d Love shall dwell,
Far from folly, far from men,
In the rude romantic glen,
Up the cliff, and thro’ the glade,
Wandering with the dear-lov’d maid, 20
I shall listen to the lay,
And ponder on thee far away
Still, as she bids those thrilling notes aspire
(‘Making my fond attuned heart her lyre’),
Thy honour’d form, my Friend! shall reappear, 25
And I will thank thee with a raptur’d tear.
1795.