On A Cataract - By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE
[AFTER STOLBERG'S _UNSTERBLICHER JÜNGLING_]


STROPHE

  Unperishing youth!
  Thou leapest from forth
  The cell of thy hidden nativity;
  Never mortal saw
  The cradle of the strong one;
  Never mortal heard
  The gathering of his voices;
  The deep-murmur'd charm of the son of the rock,
  That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.
  There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
  At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;
  It embosoms the roses of dawn,
  It entangles the shafts of the noon,
  And into the bed of its stillness
  The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,
  That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven
  May be born in a holy twilight!

ANTISTROPHE

  The wild goat in awe
  Looks up and beholds
  Above thee the cliff inaccessible;--
  Thou at once full-born
  Madd'nest in thy joyance,
  Whirlest, shatter'st, splitt'st,
  Life invulnerable.

1799.