'Dejection' (excerpt) - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

For all those still suffering from Saturday's result, or from projects cast asunder by economic disarray, there are lines from Coleridge that give comfort.  Consider this:

Work without hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.

Too true.  (Read all that one here.)

And then there's the lines he offers from 'Dejection':

A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,

A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear--

O Lady ! in this wan and heartless mood,
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,

All this long eve, so balmy and serene,

Have I been gazing on the western sky,

And its peculiar tint of yellow green :

And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye !
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars ;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen :
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue ;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are !

III

My genial spirits fail ;
And what can these avail

To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ?

It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever

On that green light that lingers in the west :
I may not hope from outward forms to win
The passion and the life, whose fountains are within.

IV

O Lady ! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live :
Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud !

And would we aught behold, of higher worth,

Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,

Ah ! from the soul itself must issue forth

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud

Enveloping the Earth--

And from the soul itself must there be sent

A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,

Of all sweet sounds the life and element !

V

O pure of heart ! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be !
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.

Joy, virtuous Lady ! Joy that ne'er was given,

Save to the pure, and in their purest hour,
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady ! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower

A new Earth and new Heaven,

Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud--
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud--

We in ourselves rejoice !

And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,

All melodies the echoes of that voice,

All colours a suffusion from that light.

VI

There was a time when, though my path was rough,

This joy within me dallied with distress,

And all misfortunes were but as the stuff

Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness :

For hope grew round me, like the twining vine,
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth :
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth ;

But oh ! each visitation

Suspends what nature gave me at my birth,

My shaping spirit of Imagination.

For not to think of what I needs must feel,

But to be still and patient, all I can ;

And haply by abstruse research to steal

From my own nature all the natural man--
This was my sole resource, my only plan :

Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul...

Read on here for the full poem...