Since he came up, here are three good poems by Coleridge:
Drinking versus Thinking
Or, A Song Against the New Philosophy
My Merry men all, that drink with glee
This fanciful Philosophy,
Pray tell me what good is it?
If antient Nick should come and take
The same across the Stygian Lake,
I guess we ne'er should miss it.
Away, each pale, self-brooding spark
That goes truth-hunting in the dark,
Away from our carousing!
To Pallas we resign such fowls -
Grave birds of Wisdom! ye're but owls,
And all your trade but mousing!
My merry men all, here's punch and wine,
And spicy bishop, drink divine!
Let's live while we are able.
While Mirth and Sense sit, hand in glove,
This Don Philosophy we'll shove
Dead drunk beneath the table!
And more somberly:
Human Life,
On the Denial of Immortality
If dead, we case to be; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being! If the breath
Be life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death;
O Man! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes!
Surplus of nature's dead activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously!
Blank accident! nothing's anomaly!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, they fears,
The counter-weights! - Thy laughter and they tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create,
And to repay the other! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood,
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf,
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of they shadowy self?
Be sad! be glad! be neither! seek, or shun!
Thou hast no reason why! Thou canst have none;
They being's being is a contradiction.
And, more uplifting:
God's Omnipresence,
A Hymn
My Maker! of they power the trace
In every creature's form and face
The wond'ring soul surveys:
Thy wisdom, infinite above
Seraphic thought, a Father's love
As infinite displays!
From all that meets or eye or ear,
There falls a genial holy fear
Which, like the heavy dew of morn,
Refreshes while it bows the heart forlorn!
Great God! they works how wondrous fair!
Yet sinful man didst thou declare
The whole Earth's voice and mind!
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Lord ev'n as Thou all-present art,
O may we still with heedful heart
Thy presence know and find!
Then, come what will, of weal and woe,
Joy's bosom-spring shall steady flow;
For though 'tis Heaven THYSELF to see,
Where but thy Shadow falls, Grief cannot be!
(Notice, incidentally, the use of the line "If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state" to serve directly opposite moods and themes in these last two poems.)
