While sorrow sad, like the dank willow near her, Hangs o'er the troubled fountain of her eye. Yet three years after the date of this composition, in 1797, which has been called his _Annus Mirabilis_, he had reached his poetical zenith. But perhaps it may be said that, from original temperament, and the excitement of circumstances, my Father lived fast. He had four poetical epochs, which represented, in some sort, boyhood, youthful manhood, middle age, and the decline of life. The first commenced a little on this side childhood, when he wrote _Time real and Imaginary_, and ended in 1796. This period embraces the Juvenile Poems, concluding with _Religious Musings_, written on the Christmas Eve of 1794, a few months after _The Fall of Robespierre_: _The Destiny of Nations_ was composed a little earlier. _Lewti_, written in 1795, _The Æolian Harp_, and _Reflections on having left a place of Retirement_, written soon after, are more finished poems, and exhibit more of his peculiar vein than any which he wrote before them; though one poet, Mr. Bowles, has said that he never surpassed the _Religious Musings_! _Fire, Famine, and Slaughter_ belongs to 1796. _The Lines to a Friend_ (Charles Lamb) _who had declared his intention of writing no more poetry_, and those _To a Young Friend_ (Charles Lloyd) were composed in the same year. These poems of 1794-5-6 may be considered intermediate in power as in time, and so forming a link between the first epoch and the next.[55] Then came his poetic prime, which commenced with the _Ode to the Departing Year_, composed at the end of December, 1796. The year following, the five-and-twentieth of his life, produced the _Ancient Mariner_, _Love_, and _The Dark Ladie_, the first part of _Christabel_, _Kubla Khan_, _Remorse_, in its original cast, _France_, and _This Lime-tree bower_. _Fears in Solitude_, _The Nightingale_, and _The Wanderings of Cain_, were written in 1798. _Frost at Midnight_,[56] _The Picture_,[57] the _Lines to the Rev. G. Coleridge_,[58] and those _To W. Wordsworth_,[59] are all of this same Stowey period. It was in June, 1797, that my Father began to be intimate with Mr. Wordsworth, and this doubtless gave an impulse to his mind. _The Hymn before Sunrise_,[60] and other strains produced in Germany, link this period to the next. The _Hexameters written during a temporary blindness_, and the _Catullian Hendecasyllables_ (which are freely translated from Matthisson's _Milesisches Mährchen_) Mr. Cottle seems to place in 1797,[61] but the Author has marked the former as produced in 1799, and I believe that the latter are of the same date. The _Night Scene_, _Myrtle leaf that ill besped_,[62] _Maiden that with sullen brow_, are of this period, and so I believe are _Lines composed in a concert-room_, and some others.