We join no feeling and attach no form!
As if the soldier died without a wound;
As if the fibres of this godlike frame
Were gored without a pang; as if the wretch
Who fell in battle, doing bloody deeds,
Pass'd off to heaven, translated, and not killed;—
As though he had no wife to pine for him—
No God to judge him! Therefore, evil days
Are coming on us, O my countrymen!
And what if all-avenging Providence,
Strong and retributive, should make us know
The meaning of our words; force us to feel
The desolation and the agony
Of our fierce doings!
I have told,
O Britons! O my brethren! I have told
Most bitter truth, but without bitterness.
Nor deem my zeal or factious or mistimed:
For never can true courage dwell with them,
Who playing tricks with conscience, dare not look
At their own vices. We have been too long
Dupes of a deep delusion!—Others, meanwhile,
Dote with a mad idolatry; and all
Who will not fall before their images,
And yield them worship, they are enemies
Even of their country!
Such have I been deem'd."[1]—S. T. C.
- ↑ That he might be deemed so no longer, Mr. Coleridge soon after became passionate for war himself; and "swell'd the war-whoop" in the Morning Post. "I am not indeed silly enough," he says, "to take as any thing more than a violent hyperbole of party debate, Mr. Fox's assertion that the late war (1802) was a war produced by the Morning Post; or I should be proud to have the words inscribed on my tomb."—Biographia Literaria, vol. i. p. 212.
