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Than lies upon that truth, we live to learn,

For fable is Love’s world, his home, his birth-place:

Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays and talismans,

And spirits; and delightedly believes

Divinities, being himself divine.

The intelligible forms of ancient poets,

The fair humanities of old religion,

The Power, the Beauty, and the Majesty,

That had their haunts in dale, or piny mountain,

Or forest, by slow stream, or pebbly spring,

Or chasms and wat’ry depths; all these have vanished.

They live no longer in the faith of reason!

But still the heart doth need a language, still

Doth the old instinct bring back the old names,

And to yon starry world they now are gone,

Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth

With man as with their friend; and to the lover

Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky

Shoot influence down: and even at this day

’Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great,

And Venus who brings everything that’s fair.

S. T. Coleridge (Wallenstein—The Piccolomini).

His faith.—Wallenstein, the great German soldier and statesman (1583-1634) believed in astrology.