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Title: To Two Sisters
Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge [
More Titles by Coleridge]
[MARY MORGAN AND CHARLOTTE BRENT]
A WANDERER'S FAREWELL
To know, to esteem, to love,--and then to part--
Makes up life's tale to many a feeling heart;
Alas for some abiding-place of love,
O'er which my spirit, like the mother dove,
Might brood with warming wings!
O fair! O kind!
Sisters in blood, yet each with each intwined
More close by sisterhood of heart and mind!
Me disinherited in form and face
By nature, and mishap of outward grace;
Who, soul and body, through one guiltless fault
Waste daily with the poison of sad thought,
Me did you soothe, when solace hoped I none!
And as on unthaw'd ice the winter sun,
Though stern the frost, though brief the genial day,
You bless my heart with many a cheerful ray;
For gratitude suspends the heart's despair,
Reflecting bright though cold your image there.
Nay more! its music by some sweeter strain
Makes us live o'er our happiest hours again,
Hope re-appearing dim in memory's guise--
Even thus did you call up before mine eyes
Two dear, dear Sisters, prized all price above,
Sisters, like you, with more than sisters' love;
_So_ like you _they_, and so in _you_ were seen
Their relative statures, tempers, looks, and mien,
That oft, dear ladies! you have been to me
At once a vision and reality.
Sight seem'd a sort of memory, and amaze
Mingled a trouble with affection's gaze.
Oft to my eager soul I whisper blame,
A Stranger bid it feel the Stranger's shame--
My eager soul, impatient of the name,
No strangeness owns, no Stranger's form descries:
The chidden heart spreads trembling on the eyes.
First-seen I gazed, as I would look you thro'!
My best-beloved regain'd their youth in you,--
And still I ask, though now familiar grown,
Are you for _their_ sakes dear, or for your own?
O doubly dear! may Quiet with you dwell!
In Grief I love you, yet I love you well!
Hope long is dead to me! an orphan's tear
Love wept despairing o'er his nurse's bier.
Yet still she flutters o'er her grave's green slope:
For Love's despair is but the ghost of Hope!
Sweet Sisters! were you placed around one hearth
With those, your other selves in shape and worth,
Far rather would I sit in solitude,
Fond recollections all my fond heart's food,
And dream of _you_, sweet Sisters! (ah! not mine!)
And only _dream_ of you (ah! dream and pine!)
Than boast the presence and partake the pride,
And shine in the eye, of all the world beside.
1807.
[The end]
Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem: To Two Sisters
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