Explore "On a Cataract" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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.