{‘Dear Babe’}[4th November 1990]

[Redbook8:85][19901104:0945]{‘Dear Babe’}[4th November 1990]

19901104.(0945c)

‘... Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent 'mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.*

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,**

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

|Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.|***

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the night-thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.’

– Coleridge, {[concluding part] from} ‘Frost at Midnight’, February 1798

(from Coleridge: Poetical works (OUP pb), p242).

*You had sky & stars in the great city? – You were lucky!

**’I hate the country, Daddy; I wanna live in the city.’

***|...| [As emphasised in ms]

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