care and effort—and the storm passed, and played the part of Much ado about Nothing, among cliff-caves and tree-tops that soon returned to their former equanimity. 'Tis an ingenious and eloquent exercitation of the fancy-touched, as we have seen, and more than touched, in parts imbued, with the breath of a higher power-but it wants that depth, truth, and sincerity of passion, without which there can be no "great ode." This Ode deals with dreams-day dreams and night dreams -and dreams are from Jove-thoughts and feelings glanced back from heaven on earth-for on earth was their origin and first dominion; but on their return to earth they are of higher and holier power, because etherealised; dreams dearest to the poet as a man, with his own environments, of which home, and the hopes of home-with love illumined—are the strongest and the chief. They have all a personal interest to him; in them is his very being, and his very being is theirs—at least it is his desire and design to indulge and declare that belief -though we have not hesitated to hint that "the higher mood" is not sustained, and hence imperfect execution-so that while many parts are eminently beautiful, something, nay much, is felt to be wanting-and the Ode-so call it though brilliant, and better than brilliant-with all his genius -is not a sincere, satisfying, and consummate Whole. In the "Departing Year," the Poet takes a wider sweep— or we should perhaps speak more truly were we to say, that in it his personal individuality is merged in his citizenship or patriotism—and that again swallowed up in his philanthropy or enthusiasm in the cause of liberty all over the world. In the prefixed argument we are told, "the Ode commences with an address to the Divine Providence, that regulates with one vast harmony all the events of time, however calamitous some of them may appear to mortals. The second strophe calls on men to suspend their present joys and sorrows, and devote them for a while to the cause of human nature in general. The first epode speaks of the Empress of Russia, who died of an apoplexy on the 17th of November 1796; having first concluded a subsidiary treaty with the kings combined against France. The first and second antistrophe describe the image of the departing year, and as in a vision. The second epode prophesies, in anguish of spirit, the downfall of the country." No "Great Ode" could have such an argument. It is false and hollow, and altogether delusive. There was here no true spirit of prophecy-and the poet who is deceived by appearances, in vain aspires to soar into the Empyrean. The wings of genius must be imped with the plumes of truth-else the flight will be short and low, and fluttering it will fall to earth. Perhaps we have just now employed too strong an image; but of bad politics it is not possible to make good poetry; and though Coleridge's politics were never bad-how could they, being those of a man of genius and virtue ?—they were even at this period very imperfect, and very imperfect, therefore, is this political poem. The death by apoplexy of the Empress of Russia, on the 17th November 1796-as stated in the obituary to the Ode-is exulted over in the Ode itself with undignified violence of declamation, which in spite of very magnificent mouthing sounds very like a scold: "Stunned by death's twice mortal mace, No more on murder's lurid face Th' insatiate hag shall gloat with drunken eye!" "The exterminating fiend is fled Foul her life and dark her doom." All true. But how unlike Isaiah in his ire! We fear, too, that the feeling is a false one, in which he addresses, on that event, the manes of them who died on Warsaw's plain : "And them that erst at Ismael's tower, When human ruin choked the streams, The poet who calls upon ghosts must, in his invocation, speak like a heaven-commissioned prophet. His words must sound as if they had power to pierce the grave, and force it to give up its dead. To evoke them, shrouded or unshrouded, from the clammy clay-bloodless or clotted with blood-needs a mighty incantation. The dry bones would not stir-not a corpse would groan-at such big but weak words as these : "Spirits of the uncoffined slain, Sudden blasts of triumph swelling, Rush around her narrow dwelling." "Nightly armies of the dead Dance like death-fires round her tomb! Each some tyrant murderer's fate." "Sudden blasts of triumph," indeed, swelling from the uncoffined slain! Alas! dismal is Hades-and neither vengeance nor triumph dwell with the dead. But if fancy will parley with the disembodied, and believe that they will obey her call, let her speak not with the tongue of men, but of angelsand on an occasion so great, at a time so portentous, that the troubled hearts of the living may be willing to think that a human being can "create a soul under the ribs of death." But here there is no passion-no power. "The mighty armies of the dead" keep rotting on. Their dancing days are over. Yet if they could indeed become "death-fires," dance would they not round the tomb of the imperial murderess—nor would they with "prophetic song relate each some tyrant murderer's doom." If true Polish patriot ghosts, with Kosciusko at their head, they would rather have implored heaven to let them be their own avengers-and that one spectre, pursued by many spectres, might fix on the mercy-seat its black eye-sockets in vain. The time was when even Coleridge, alas! could say, "Not yet enslaved, not wholly vile, O Albion !!" Nor better, higher comfort, at the close could he find, than to desert his lost country, and "Recentre my immortal mind In the deep Sabbath of meek self-content.” Yet there are many flashes of elevated thought in the midst of smoky clouds whose turbulence is not grandeur, and one strain, and one only, approaches the sublime. "Departing Year! 'twas on no earthly shore Thou storied'st thy sad hours! Silence ensued, Whose locks with wreaths, whose wreaths with glories shone. Then, his eye wild ardours glancing, The Spirit of the earth made reverence meet, Throughout the blissful throng, Hushed were harp and song; Till wheeling round the throne the Lampads seven, (The Mystic words of Heaven) Permissive signal make: The fervent Spirit bowed, then spread his wings and spake ! 'Thou in stormy blackness throning Love and uncreated Light, By the Earth's unsolaced groaning, And hunger's bosom to the frost-winds bared! Strange, horrible, and foul ! By what deep guilt belongs To the deaf Synod, "full of gifts and lies!" For ever shall the thankless Island scowl, Open thine eye of fire from some uncertain cloud! The Past to thee, to thee the Future cries! Hark! how wide Nature joins her groans below! We have said that this is almost sublime; yet we have never been able to read it without a sense-more or less painful-not of violation of the most awful reverence, for that would be too strong a word-but of too daring an approximation to the "cloudy seat" by a creature yet in the clay. The lips of the poet must indeed be touched with a coal from heaven, who invokes the Most High, and calls upon the God of Nature to avenge and redress Nature's wrongs. A profounder piety than was possible with the creed the poet then held, would have either sealed his lips, or inspired them with higher because humbler words. Insincere he never was; but in those days his philosophical and poetical religion spoke in words fitter for the ear of Jove than Jehovah. And that the mood in which he composed this passage was one-not of true faith, but of false enthusiasm-is manifest from the gross exaggeration of the feeling which is said to have followed the passing away of the vision. These lines should yet be struck out of the Ode: "The voice had ceased, the vision fled; Yet still I gasped and reeled with dread. No stranger agony confounds The soldier on the war-field spread, (The strife is o'er, the daylight fled, And the night-wind clamours hoarse! See the starting wretch's head Lies pillowed on a brother's corse!)" Shelley, we are told, "pronounced the 'France' to be the finest English Ode of modern times." Not if Gray and Collins belong to modern times-but assuredly it is a noble composition. "France" is a misnomer. It is in truth an Ode to Liberty-and a palinode. We quote it entire-for it will be new to tens of thousands-never, we believe, having before been so quoted in any periodical. "Ye Clouds! that far above me float and pause, |