To Fortune

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

To the editor of the ‘‘Morning Chronicle’’ Sir, —
The following poem you may perhaps deem admissible into your journal — if not, you will commit it εἰς ἰερὸν μένος Ηφαιστοιο.
— I am, with more respect and gratitude than I ordinarily feel for Editors of Papers, your obliged, &c.,Cantab. — S.T.C.
[Composed during a walk to and from the Queen’s Head, Gray’s Inn Lane, Holborn, and Hornsby’s and Co., Cornhill.]

Promptress of unnumber’d sighs,
O snatch that circling bandage from thine eyes!
O look, and smile! No common prayer
Solicits, Fortune! thy propitious care!
For, not a silken son of dress,
I clink the gilded chains of politesse,
Nor ask thy boon what time I scheme
Unholy Pleasure’s frail and feverish dream;
Nor yet my view life’s dazzle blinds —
Pomp! — Grandeur! Power! — I give you to the winds!
Let the little bosom cold
Melt only at the sunbeam ray of gold —
My pale cheeks glow — the big drops start —
The rebel Feeling riots at my heart!
And if in lonely durance pent,
Thy poor mite mourn a brief imprisonment —
That mite at Sorrow’s faintest sound
Leaps from its scrip with an elastic bound!
But oh! if ever song thine ear
Might soothe, O haste with fost’ring hand to rear
One Flower of Hope! At Love’s behest,
Trembling, I plac’d it in my secret breast:
And thrice I’ve view’d the vernal gleam,
Since oft mine eye, with Joy’s electric beam,
Illum’d it — and its sadder hue
Oft moisten’d with the Tear’s ambrosial dew!
Poor wither’d floweret! on its head
Has dark Despair his sickly mildew shed!
But thou, O Fortune! canst relume
Its deaden’d tints — and thou with hardier bloom
May’st haply tinge its beauties pale,
And yield the unsunn’d stranger to the western gale!