It were a state too terrible for man
Hartley Coleridge
1796 to 1849
It were a state too terrible for man,
Too terrible and strange, and most unmeet,
To look into himself, his state to scan,
And find no precedent, no chart, or plan,
But think himself an embryo incomplete,
Else a remnant of a world effete,
Some by-blow of the universal Pan,
Great nature’s waif, that must by law escheat
To the liege-lord Corruption. Sad the case
Of man, who knows not wherefore he was made;
But he that knows the limits of his race
Not runs, but flies, with prosperous winds to aid;
Or if he limps, he knows his path was trod
By saints of old, who knew their way to God.
Hartley Coleridge's It were a state too terrible for man
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