Down on cold earth; and for a while was dead,
And my freed soul to a strange somewhere fled:
Ah, sottish soul, said I,
When back to its cage again I saw it fly:
Fool to resume her broken chain!
And row her galley here again!
Fool, to that body to return
Where it condemn'd and destin'd is to burn!
Once dead, how can it be,
Death should a thing so pleasant seem to thee,
That thou should'st come to live it o'er again in me?
--_Cowley_.
A LOVER'S HEART A HAND GRENADO.
Wo to her stubborn heart, if once mine come
Into the self-same room,
'T will tear and blow up all within,
Like a grenado shot into a magazin.
Then shall Love keep the ashes, and torn parts,
Of both our broken hearts:
Shall out of both one new one make;
From hers th' allay; from mine, the metal take.
--_Cowley_.
THE POETICAL PROPAGATION OF LIGHT.
The Prince's favour is diffus'd o'er all,
From which all fortunes, names, and natures fall;
Then from those wombs of stars, the Bride's bright eyes,
At every glance a constellation flies,
And sows the court with stars, and doth prevent
In light and power, the all-ey'd firmament:
First her eye kindles other ladies' eyes,
Then from their beams their jewels' lustres rise;
And from their jewels torches do take fire,
And all is warmth, and light, and good desire.
--_Donne_.
They were in very little care to clothe their notions with elegance
of dress, and therefore miss the notice and the praise which are often
gained by those who think less, but are more diligent to adorn their
thoughts.
That a mistress beloved is fairer in idea than in reality is by Cowley
thus expressed:
Thou in my fancy dost much higher stand,
Than woman can be plac'd by Nature's hand;
And I must needs, I'm sure, a loser be,
To change thee, as thou 'rt there, for very thee.
That prayer and labour should co-operate are thus taught by Donne:
In none but us, are such mixt engines found,
As hands of double office: for the ground
We till with them; and them to heaven we raise;
Who prayerless labours, or without this, prays,
Doth but one half, that's none.
By the same author, a common topic, the danger of procrastination, is
thus illustrated:
--That which I should have begun In my youth's morning, now late
must be done; And I, as giddy travellers must do, Which stray or
sleep all day, and having lost Light and strength, dark and tir'd
must then ride post.
All that Man has to do is to live and die; the sum of humanity is
comprehended by Donne in the following lines:
Think in how poor a prison thou didst lie;
After, enabled but to suck and cry.
Think, when't was grown to most, 't was a poor inn,
A province pack'd up in two yards of skin,
And that usurp'd, or threaten'd with a rage
Of sicknesses, or their true mother, age.
But think that death hath now enfranchis'd thee;
Thou hast thy expansion now, and liberty;
Think, that a rusty piece discharg'd is flown
In pieces, and the bullet is his own,
And freely flies; this to thy soul allow,
Think thy shell broke, think thy soul hatched but now.
They were sometimes indelicate and disgusting. Cowley thus apostrophizes
beauty:
--Thou tyrant, which leav'st no man free! Thou subtle thief, from
whom nought safe can be! Thou murderer, which hast kill'd, and devil,
which would'st damn me.
Thus he addresses his mistress:
Thou who, in many a propriety,
So truly art the sun to me.
Add one more likeness, which I'm sure you can,
And let me and my sun beget a man.
Thus he represents the meditations of a lover:
Though in thy thoughts scarce any tracts have been
So much as of original sin,
Such charms thy beauty wears as might
Desires in dying confest saints excite.
Thou with strange adultery
Dost in each breast a brothel keep;
Awake, all men do lust for thee,
And some enjoy thee when they sleep.
The true taste of tears:
Hither with crystal vials, lovers, come,
And take my tears, which are Love's wine,
And try your mistress' tears at home;
For all are false, that taste not just like mine.
--_Donne_.
This is yet more indelicate:
As the sweet sweat of roses in a still
As that which from chaf'd musk-cat's pores doth trill,
As th' almighty balm of th' early East,
Such are the sweet drops of my mistress' breast.
And on her neck her skin such lustre sets,
They seem no sweat-drops, but pearl coronets:
Rank sweaty froth thy mistress' brow defiles.
--_Donne_.
Their expressions sometimes raise horror, when they intend perhaps to
be pathetic:
As men in hell are from diseases free,
So from all other ills am I.
Free from their known formality:
But all pains eminently lie in thee.
--_Cowley_.
They were not always strictly curious, whether the opinions from which
they drew their illustrations were true; it was enough that they were
popular. Bacon remarks that some falsehoods are continued by tradition,
because they supply commodious allusions.
It gave a piteous groan, and so it broke;
In vain it something would have spoke:
The love within too strong for't was,
Like poison put into a Venice-glass.
--_Cowley_.
In forming descriptions, they looked out, not for images, but for
conceits. Night has been a common subject, which poets have contended
to adorn. Dryden's Night is well known; Donne's is as follows:
Thou seest me here at midnight, now all rest:
Time's dead low-water; when all minds divest
To-morrow's business, when the labourers have
Such rest in bed, that their last church-yard grave,
Subject to change, will scarce be a type of this;
Now when the client, whose last hearing is
To-morrow, sleeps; when the condemned man,
Who when he opens his eyes, must shut them then
Again by death, although sad watch he keep,
Doth practise dying by a little sleep,
Thou at this midnight seest me.
It must be, however, confessed of these writers that if they are upon
common subjects often unnecessarily and unpoetically subtle, yet where
scholastic speculation can be properly admitted, their copiousness and
acuteness may justly be admired. What Cowley has written upon Hope
shows an unequalled fertility of invention:
Hope, whose weak being ruin'd is,
Alike if it succeed, and if it miss;
Whom good or ill does equally confound,
And both the horns of Fate's dilemma wound.
Vain shadow, which dost vanish quite,
Both at full noon and perfect night!
The stars have not a possibility
Of blessing thee;
If things then from their end we happy call,
'T is hope is the most hopeless thing of all.
Hope, thou bold taster of delight,
Who, whilst thou shouldst but taste, devour'st it quite!
Thou bring'st us an estate, yet leav'st us poor,
By clogging it with legacies before!
The joys, which we entire should wed,
Come deflower'd virgins to our bed;
Good fortune without gain imported be,
Such mighty customs paid to thee:
For joy, like wine, kept close does better taste;
If it take air before, its spirits waste.
To the following comparison of a man that travels and his wife that
stays at home, with a pair of compasses, it may be doubted whether
absurdity or ingenuity has the better claim:
Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin-compasses are two,
Thy soul, the fixt foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if th' other do.
And though it in the centre sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans, and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must
Like th' other foot, obliquely run.
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun._
--Donne._
In all these examples it is apparent that whatever is improper or
vicious is produced by a voluntary deviation from nature in pursuit
of something new and strange, and that the writers fail to give delight
by their desire of exciting admiration.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE.
(1772-1834)
IV. ON POETIC GENIUS AND POETIC DICTION.
The following passage forms Chapters xiv and xv of Coleridge's
_Biographia Literaria_, published in 1817 It has been selected as
giving a less imperfect impression of his powers as a critic than any
other piece that could have been chosen The truth is that, great in
talk and supreme in poetry, Coleridge was lost directly he sat down
to express himself in prose His style is apt to be cumbrous, and his
matter involved. We feel that the critic himself was greater than any
criticism recorded either in his writings or his lectures The present
extract may be defined as an attempt, and an attempt less inadequate
than was common with Coleridge, to state his poetic creed, and to
illustrate it by reference to his own poetry and to that of Wordsworth
and of Shakespeare. In what he says of Shakespeare he is at his best.
He forgets himself, and writes with a single eye to a theme which was
thoroughly worthy of his powers. In the earlier part of the piece, and
indeed indirectly throughout, he has in mind Wordsworth's famous Preface
to the _Lyrical Ballads_, which is to be found in any complete edition
of Wordsworth's poems, or in his poise writings, as edited by Dr.
Grosart.
During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth and I were neighbours, our
conversation turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry,
the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence
to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty
by the modifying colours of imagination. The sudden charm, which
accidents of light and shade, which moonlight or sunset, diffused over
a known and familiar landscape, appeared to represent the practicability
of combining both. These are the poetry of nature. The thought suggested
itself (to which of us I do not recollect) that a series of poems might
be composed of two sorts. In the one, the incidents and agents were
to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was
to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth
of such emotions, as would naturally accompany such situations,
supposing them real. And real in this sense they have been to every
human being who, from whatever source of delusion, has at any time
believed himself under supernatural agency. For the second class,
subjects were to be chosen from ordinary life; the characters and
incidents were to be such as will be found in every village and its
vicinity where there is a meditative and feeling mind to seek after
them, or to notice them when they present themselves.
In this idea originated the plan of the _Lyrical Ballads;_ [Footnote:
Published in 1798. It opened with the _Ancient Mariner_ and closed
with Wordsworth's lines on _Tintern Abbey._ Among other poems written
in Wordsworth's simplest style were _The Idiot Boy, The Thorn,_ and
_We are Seven._] in which it was agreed that my endeavours should be
directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic;
yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a
semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of
imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which
constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth, on the other hand, was to
propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to
things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the
supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of
custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world
before us; an inexhaustible treasure, but for which, in consequence
of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes, yet
see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor
understand.
With this view I wrote the _Ancient Mariner,_ and was preparing, among
other poems, the _Dark Ladie,_ and the _Christabel,_ in which I should
have more nearly realized my ideal than I had done in my first attempt.
But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had proved so much more successful, and
the number of his poems so much greater, that my compositions, instead
of forming a balance, appeared rather an interpolation of heterogeneous
matter. Mr. Wordsworth added two or three poems written in his own
character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sustained diction which is
characteristic of his genius. In this form the _Lyrical Ballads_ were
published; and were presented by him, as an experiment, whether
subjects, which from their nature rejected the usual ornaments and
extra-colloquial style of poems in general, might not be so managed
in the language of ordinary life as to produce the pleasurable interest
which it is the peculiar business of poetry to impart. To the second
edition he added a preface of considerable length; in which,
notwithstanding some passages of apparently a contrary import, he was
understood to contend for the extension of this style to poetry of all
kinds, and to reject as vicious and indefensible all phrases and forms
of style that were not included in what he (unfortunately, I think,
adopting an equivocal expression) called the language of real life.
From this preface, prefixed to poems in which it was impossible to
deny the presence of original genius, however mistaken its direction
might be deemed, arose the whole long-continued controversy. For from
the conjunction of perceived power with supposed heresy I explain the
inveteracy, and in some instances, I grieve to say, the acrimonious
passions, with which the controversy has been conducted by the
assailants.
Had Mr. Wordsworth's poems been the silly, the childish things which
they were for a long time described as being; had they been really
distinguished from the compositions of other poets merely by meanness
of language and inanity of thought; had they indeed contained nothing
more than what is found in the parodies and pretended imitations of
them; they must have sunk at once, a dead weight, into the slough of
oblivion, and have dragged the preface along with them. But year after
year increased the number of Mr. Wordsworth's admirers. They were
found, too, not in the lower classes of the reading public, but chiefly
among young men of strong sensibility and meditative minds; and their
admiration (inflamed perhaps in some degree by opposition) was
distinguished by its intensity, I might almost say, by its religious
fervour. These facts, and the intellectual energy of the author, which
was more or less consciously felt, where it was outwardly and even
boisterously denied, meeting with sentiments of aversion to his
opinions, and of alarm at their consequences, produced an eddy of
criticism, which would of itself have borne up the poems by the violence
with which it whirled them round and round. With many parts of this
preface, in the sense attributed to them, and which the words
undoubtedly seem to authorize, I never concurred; but, on the contrary,
objected to them as erroneous in principle, and as contradictory (in
appearance at least) both to other parts of the same preface and to
the author's own practice in the greater number of the poems themselves.
Mr. Wordsworth, in his recent collection, has, I find, degraded this
prefatory disquisition to the end of his second volume, to be read or
not at the reader's choice. But he has not, as far as I can discover,
announced any change in his poetic creed. At all events, considering
it as the source of a controversy, in which I have been honoured more
than I deserve by the frequent conjunction of my name with his, I think
it expedient to declare, once for all, in what points I coincide with
his opinions, and in what points I altogether differ. But in order to
render myself intelligible, I must previously, in as few words as
possible, explain my ideas, first, of a poem; and secondly, of poetry
itself, in kind and in essence.
The office of philosophical disquisition consists in just distinction;
while it is the privilege of the philosopher to preserve himself
constantly aware that distinction is not division. In order to obtain
adequate notions of any truth, we must intellectually separate its
distinguishable parts; and this is the technical process of philosophy.
But having so done, we must then restore them in our conceptions to
the unity in which they actually co-exist; and this is the result of
philosophy.
A poem contains the same elements as a prose composition; the
difference, therefore, must consist in a different combination of them,
in consequence of a different object proposed. According to the
difference of the object will be the difference of the combination.
It is possible that the object may be merely to facilitate the
recollection of any given facts or observations by artificial
arrangement; and the composition will be a poem, merely because it is
distinguished from prose by metre, or by rhyme, or by both conjointly.
In this, the lowest sense, a man might attribute the name of a poem
to the well-known enumeration of the days in the several months:
Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November, &c.
and others of the same class and purpose. And as a particular pleasure
is found in anticipating the recurrence of sounds and quantities, all
compositions that have this charm superadded, whatever be their
contents, _may_ be entitled poems.
So much for the superficial form. A difference of object and contents
supplies an additional ground of distinction. The immediate purpose
may be the communication of truths; either of truth absolute and
demonstrable, as in works of science; or of facts experienced and
recorded, as in history. Pleasure, and that of the highest and most
permanent kind, may result from the attainment of the end; but it is
not itself the immediate end. In other works the communication of
pleasure may be the immediate purpose; and though truth, either moral
or intellectual, ought to be the ultimate end, yet this will distinguish
the character of the author, not the class to which the work belongs.
Blest indeed is that state of society, in which the immediate purpose
would be baffled by the perversion of the proper ultimate end; in which
no charm of diction or imagery could exempt the Bathyllus even of an
Anacreon, or the Alexis of Virgil, from disgust and aversion!
But the communication of pleasure may be the immediate object of a
work not metrically composed; and that object may have been in a high
degree attained, as in novels and romances. Would then the mere
superaddition of metre, with or without rhyme, entitle these to the
name of poems? The answer is, that nothing can permanently please which
does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise.
If metre be superadded, all other parts must be made consonant with
it. They must be such as to justify the perpetual and distinct attention
to each part, which an exact correspondent recurrence of accent and
sound are calculated to excite. The final definition then, so deduced,
may be thus worded. A poem is that species of composition which is
opposed to works of science, by proposing for its immediate object
pleasure, not truth; and from all other species (having this object
in common with it) it is discriminated by proposing to itself such
delight from the whole as is compatible with a distinct gratification
from each component part.
Controversy is not seldom excited in consequence of the disputants
attaching each a different meaning to the same word; and in few
instances has this been more striking than in disputes concerning the
present subject. If a man chooses to call every composition a poem
which is rhyme, or measure, or both, I must leave his opinion
uncontroverted. The distinction is at least competent to characterize
the writer's intention. If it were subjoined that the whole is likewise
entertaining or affecting, as a tale, or as a series of interesting
reflections, I of course admit this as another fit ingredient of a
poem, and an additional merit. But if the definition sought for be
that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one the parts of which
mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion
harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of
metrical arrangement. The philosophic critics of all ages coincide
with the ultimate judgment of all countries, in equally denying the
praises of a just poem, on the one hand to a series of striking lines
or distichs, each of which, absorbing the whole attention of the reader
to itself, disjoins it from its context, and makes it a separate whole,
instead of a harmonizing part; and on the other hand, to an unsustained
composition, from which the reader collects rapidly the general result
unattracted by the component parts. The reader should be carried
forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity,
or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the
pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey
itself. Like the motion of a serpent, which the Egyptians made the
emblem of intellectual power; or like the path of sound through the
air, at every step he pauses and half recedes, and from the
retrogressive movement collects the force which again carries him
onward. _Praecipitandus est liber spiritus_, says Petronius Arbiter
most happily. The epithet, _liber_, here balances the preceding verb,
and it is not easy to conceive more meaning condensed in fewer words.
But if this should be admitted as a satisfactory character of a poem,
we have still to seek for a definition of poetry. The writings of Plato
and Bishop Taylor, and the _Theoria Sacra_ of Burnet, furnish undeniable
proofs that poetry of the highest kind may exist without metre, and
even without the contradistinguishing objects of a poem. The first
chapter of Isaiah (indeed a very large proportion of the whole book)
is poetry in the most emphatic sense; yet it would be not less
irrational than strange to assert that pleasure, and not truth, was
the immediate object of the prophet. In short, whatever specific import
we attach to the word poetry, there will be found involved in it, as
a necessary consequence, that a poem of any length neither can be, nor
ought to be, all poetry. Yet if a harmonious whole is to be produced,
the remaining parts must be preserved in keeping with the poetry; and
this can be no otherwise effected than by such a studied selection and
artificial arrangement as will partake of one, though not a peculiar,
property of poetry. And this again can be no other than the property
of exciting a more continuous and equal attention than the language
of prose aims at, whether colloquial or written.
My own conclusions on the nature of poetry, in the strictest use of
the word, have been in part anticipated in the preceding disquisition
on the fancy and imagination. What is poetry? is so nearly the same
question with, what is a poet? that the answer to the one is involved
in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from
the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images,
thoughts, and emotions of the poet's own mind. The poet, described in
ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the
subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their
relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity
that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic
and magical power to which we have exclusively appropriated the name
of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and
understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and
unnoticed, control (_laxis effertur habenis_), reveals itself in the
balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities: of
sameness, with difference; of the general, with the concrete; the idea,
with the image; the individual, with the representative; the sense of
novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual
state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake and
steady self-possession, with enthusiasm and feeling profound or
vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the
artificial, still subordinates art to nature, the manner to the matter,
and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry.
Doubtless, as Sir John Davies observes of the soul (and his words may
with slight alteration be applied, and even more appropriately, to the
poetic imagination),--