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Samuel Taylor Coleridge – The Complete Poems
From Ode to the Departing Year

Spirit who sweepest the wild harp of Time!
It is most hard, with an untroubled ear
Thy dark inwoven harmonies to hear!
Yet, mine eye fixed on Heaven's unchanging clime,
Long had I listened, free from mortal fear,
With inward stillness and a bowed mind;
When lo! Its folds far waving on the wind,
I saw the train of the departing Year
Starting from my silent sadness
Then with no unholy madness
Ere yet the entered cloud foreclosed my sight
I raised the impetuous song, and solemnised his flight

….....................

Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore
My soul beheld thy vision! Where alone,
Voiceless and stern, before the cloudy throne
Aye Memory sits: thy robe inscribed with gore,
With many an unimaginable groan
Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued,
Deep silence o'er the ethereal multitude,
Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone
Then, his eye wild ardours glancing
From the choired gods advancing
The Spirit of the Earth made reverence meet
And stood up, beautiful, before the cloudy seat
.........................................................

The voice had ceased, the vision fled;
Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread.
And ever, when the dream of night
Renews the phantom to my sight
Cold sweat drops gather on my limbs;
My ears throb hot; my eye balls start;
My brain with horrid tumult swims;
Wild is the tempest of my heart;
And my thick and struggling breath
Imitates the toil of death!