To Asra

By Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772–1834

Are there two things, of all which men possess,

That are so like each other and so near,

As mutual Love seems like to Happiness?

Dear Asra, woman beyond utterance dear!

This love which ever welling at my heart,

Now in its living fount doth heave and fall,

Now overflowing pours thro’ every part

Of all my frame, and fills and changes all,

Like vernal waters springing up through snow,

This Love that seeming great beyond the power

Of growth, yet seemeth ever more to grow,

Could I transmute the whole to one rich Dower

Of Happy Life, and give it all to Thee,

Thy lot, methinks, were Heaven, thy age, Eternity!

Biography

Samuel Taylor Coleridge is the premier poet-critic of modern English tradition, distinguished for the scope and influence of his thinking about literature as much as for his innovative verse. Active in the wake of the French Revolution as a dissenting pamphleteer and lay preacher, he inspired a brilliant generation of writers and attracted the patronage of progressive men of the rising middle class. As William Wordsworth’s . . .

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