Sarah Coleridge (1802-1850). Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837). V. "I Tremble when with Look Benign". Alfred H. Miles, ed. 1907. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale (1837)
V. “I Tremble when with Look Benign”

By Sarah Coleridge (1802–1850)


(From Chapter XVIII.) I TREMBLE when with look benign
Thou tak’st my offer’d hand in thine,
Lest passion-breathing words of mine
The charm should break:
And friendly smiles be forced to fly,	5
Like soft reflections of the sky,
Which, when rude gales are sweeping by,
Desert the lake.

Of late I saw thee in a dream;
The day-star pour’d his hottest beam,	10
And thou, a cool refreshing stream,
Did’st brightly run:
The trees where thou wert pleased to flow,
Threw out their flowers, a glorious show,
While I, too distant doomed to grow,	15
Pined in the sun.

By no life-giving moisture fed,
A wasted tree, I bow’d my head,
My sallow leaves and blossoms shed
On earth’s green breast:	20
And silent pray’d the slumbering wind,
The lake, thy tarrying place, might find,
And waft my leaves, with breathings kind,
There, there, to rest.