| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Whither? |
| | | Hartley Coleridge (1796–1849) |
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| WHITHER is gone the wisdom and the power | |
| That ancient sages scatter’d with the notes | |
| Of thought-suggesting lyres? The music floats | |
| In the void air; e’en at this breathing hour, | |
| In every cell and every blooming bower | 5 |
| The sweetness of old lays is hovering still: | |
| But the strong soul, the self-constraining will, | |
| The rugged root that bare the winsome flower | |
| Is weak and wither’d. Were we like the Fays | |
| That sweetly nestle in the foxglove bells, | 10 |
| Or lurk and murmur in the rose-lipp’d shells | |
| Which Neptune to the earth for quit-rent pays, | |
| Then might our pretty modern Philomels | |
| Sustain our spirits with their roundelays. | |
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