FOOTNOTES:
[324:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, September 24, 1799:
included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. There is no
evidence as to the date of composition. In a letter to Coleridge, dated
July 5, 1796, Lamb writes 'Have a care, good Master Poet, of the Statute
_de Contumeliâ_. What do you mean by calling Madame Mara harlots and
naughty things? The goodness of the verse would not save you in a Court
of Justice'--but it is by no means certain that Lamb is referring to the
_Lines Composed in a Concert-Room_, or that there is any allusion in
line 3 to Madame Mara. If, as J. D. Campbell suggested, the poem as it
appeared in the _Morning Post_ is a recast of some earlier verses, it is
possible that the scene is Ottery, and that 'Edmund' is the 'Friend who
died dead of' a 'Frenzy Fever' (vide _ante_, p. 76). In this case a
probable date would be the summer of 1793. But the poem as a whole
suggests a later date. Coleridge and Southey spent some weeks at Exeter
in September 1799. They visited Ottery St. Mary, and walked through
Newton Abbot to Ashburton and Dartmouth. It is possible that the
'Concert-Room,' the 'pert Captain,' and 'primmer Priest' are
reminiscences of Exeter, the 'heath-plant,' and the 'ocean caves' of
Dartmoor and Torbay. If so, the 'shame and absolute rout' (l. 49 of
variant, p. 325) would refer to the victory of Suwaroff over Joubert at
Novi, which took place August 15, 1799. See _Letters of S. T. C._, 1895,
i. 307.
LINENOTES:
[14] heartless] loathsome M. P.
[24] Around whose roots M. P., S. L.
[40] thin] then M. P.
[After line 40]
Dear Maid! whose form in solitude I seek,
Such songs in such a mood to hear thee sing,
It were a deep delight!--But thou shalt fling
Thy white arm round my neck, and kiss my cheek,
And love the brightness of my gladder eye 45
The while I tell thee what a holier joy
It were in proud and stately step to go,
With trump and timbrel clang, and popular shout,
To celebrate the shame and absolute rout
Unhealable of Freedom's latest foe, 50
Whose tower'd might shall to its centre nod.
When human feelings, sudden, deep and vast,
As all good spirits of all ages past
Were armied in the hearts of living men,
Shall purge the earth, and violently sweep 55
These vile and painted locusts to the deep,
Leaving un---- undebas'd
A ---- world made worthy of its God.
M. P.
[The words in lines 57, 58 were left as blanks in the Morning Post,
from what cause or with what object must remain a matter of doubt.]
WESTPHALIAN SONG[326:1]
[The following is an almost literal translation of a very old and very
favourite song among the Westphalian Boors. The turn at the end is the
same with one of Mr. Dibdin's excellent songs, and the air to which it
is sung by the Boors is remarkably sweet and lively.]
When thou to my true-love com'st
Greet her from me kindly;
When she asks thee how I fare?
Say, folks in Heaven fare finely.
When she asks, 'What! Is he sick?' 5
Say, dead!--and when for sorrow
She begins to sob and cry,
Say, I come to-morrow.
? 1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[326:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, Sept. 27, 1802: reprinted
in _Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, iii. 992. First collected in _P.
W._, 1877-80, ii. 170.
HEXAMETERS[326:2]
PARAPHRASE OF PSALM XLVI
Gōd ĭs oŭr Strēngth ănd oŭr Rēfŭge: thērefŏre wīll wĕ nŏt trēmblĕ,
Thō' thĕ Eārth bĕ rĕmōvĕd ănd thō' thĕ pĕrpētŭăl Moūntaīns
Sink in the Swell of the Ocean! God is our Strength and our Refuge.
There is a River the Flowing whereof shall gladden the City,
Hallelujah! the City of God! Jehova shall help her. 5
Thē Idōlătĕrs rāgĕd, the kingdoms were moving in fury;
But he uttered his Voice: Earth melted away from beneath them.
Halleluja! th' Eternal is with us, Almighty Jehova!
Fearful the works of the Lord, yea fearful his Desolations;
But He maketh the Battle to cease, he burneth the Spear and the
Chariot. 10
Halleluja! th' Eternal is with us, the God of our Fathers!
1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[326:2] Now published for the first time. The lines were sent in a
letter to George Coleridge dated September 29, 1799. They were prefaced
as follows:--'We were talking of Hexameters with you. I will, for want
of something better, fill up the paper with a translation of one of my
favourite Psalms into that metre which allowing trochees for spondees,
as the nature of our Language demands, you will find pretty accurate a
scansion.' _Mahomet_ and, no doubt, the _Hymn to the Earth_ may be
assigned to the end of September or the beginning of October, 1799.
HYMN TO THE EARTH[327:1]
[IMITATED FROM STOLBERG'S _HYMNE AN DIE ERDE_]
HEXAMETERS
Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the
mother,
Hail! O Goddess, thrice hail! Blest be thou! and, blessing, I hymn
thee!
Forth, ye sweet sounds! from my harp, and my voice shall float on
your surges--
Soar thou aloft, O my soul! and bear up my song on thy pinions.
Travelling the vale with mine eyes--green meadows and lake with
green island, 5
Dark in its basin of rock, and the bare stream flowing in
brightness,
Thrilled with thy beauty and love in the wooded slope of the
mountain,
Here, great mother, I lie, thy child, with his head on thy bosom!
Playful the spirits of noon, that rushing soft through thy tresses,
Green-haired goddess! refresh me; and hark! as they hurry or
linger, 10
Fill the pause of my harp, or sustain it with musical murmurs.
Into my being thou murmurest joy, and tenderest sadness
Shedd'st thou, like dew, on my heart, till the joy and the
heavenly sadness
Pour themselves forth from my heart in tears, and the hymn of
thanksgiving.
Earth! thou mother of numberless children, the nurse and the
mother, 15
Sister thou of the stars, and beloved by the Sun, the rejoicer!
Guardian and friend of the moon, O Earth, whom the comets forget
not,
Yea, in the measureless distance wheel round and again they behold
thee!
Fadeless and young (and what if the latest birth of creation?)
Bride and consort of Heaven, that looks down upon thee enamoured! 20
Say, mysterious Earth! O say, great mother and goddess,
Was it not well with thee then, when first thy lap was ungirdled,
Thy lap to the genial Heaven, the day that he wooed thee and won
thee!
Fair was thy blush, the fairest and first of the blushes of
morning!
Deep was the shudder, O Earth! the throe of thy self-retention: 25
Inly thou strovest to flee, and didst seek thyself at thy centre!
Mightier far was the joy of thy sudden resilience; and forthwith
Myriad myriads of lives teemed forth from the mighty embracement.
Thousand-fold tribes of dwellers, impelled by thousand-fold
instincts,
Filled, as a dream, the wide waters; the rivers sang on their
channels; 30
Laughed on their shores the hoarse seas; the yearning ocean
swelled upward;
Young life lowed through the meadows, the woods, and the echoing
mountains,
Wandered bleating in valleys, and warbled on blossoming branches.
1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[327:1] First published in _Friendship's Offering_, 1834, pp. 165-7,
with other pieces, under the general heading:--_Fragments from the Wreck
of Memory: or Portions of Poems composed in Early Manhood: by S. T.
Coleridge._ A Note was prefixed:--'It may not be without use or interest
to youthful, and especially to intelligent female readers of poetry, to
observe that in the attempt to adapt the Greek metres to the English
language, we must begin by substituting _quality_ of sound for
_quantity_--that is, accentuated or comparatively emphasized syllables,
for what in the Greek and Latin Verse, are named long, and of which the
prosodial mark is ¯; and _vice versâ_, unaccented syllables for short
marked ˘. Now the Hexameter verse consists of two sorts of _feet_, the
spondee composed of two long syllables, and the dactyl, composed of one
long syllable followed by two short. The following verse from the Psalms
is a rare instance of a _perfect_ hexameter (i. e. line of six feet) in
the English language:--
Gōd cāme | ūp wĭth ă | shōut: oūr | Lōrd wĭth thĕ | sōund ŏf ă |
trūmpĕt.
But so few are the truly _spondaic_ words in our language, such as
Ēgȳpt, ūprŏar, tūrmoĭl, &c., that we are compelled to substitute, in
most instances, the trochee; or ¯ ˘, i. e. in such words as mērry̆,
līghtly̆, &c., for the proper spondee. It need only be added, that in
the hexameter the fifth foot must be a dactyl, and the sixth a spondee,
or trochee. I will end this note with two hexameter lines, likewise from
the Psalms:--
Thēre ĭs ă | rīvĕr thĕ | flōwĭng whĕre|ōf shāll | glāddĕn thĕ | cīty̆,
Hāllē|lūjăh thĕ | cīty̆ | Gōd Jē|hōvăh hăth | blēst hĕr.
S. T. C.'
On some proof-sheets, or loose pages of a copy of _The Hymn_ as
published in _Friendship's Offering_ for 1834, which Coleridge
annotated, no doubt with a view to his corrections being adopted in the
forthcoming edition of his poems (1834), he adds in MS. the following
supplementary note:--'To make any considerable number of Hexameters
feasible in our monosyllabic trocheeo-iambic language, there must, I
fear, be other licenses granted--in the _first_ foot, at least--_ex.
gr._ a superfluous ˘ prefixed in cases of particles such as 'of, 'and',
and the like: likewise ¯ ˘ ¯ where the stronger accent is on the first
syllable.--S. T. C.'
The _Hymn to the Earth_ is a free translation of F. L. Stolberg's _Hymne
an die Erde_. (See F. Freiligrath's _Biographical Memoirs_ prefixed to
the Tauchnitz edition of the _Poems_ published in 1852.) The translation
exceeds the German original by two lines. The Hexameters 'from the
Psalms' are taken from a metrical experiment which Coleridge sent to his
brother George, in a letter dated September 29, 1799 (vide _ante_).
First collected in 1834. The acknowledgement that the _Hymn to the
Earth_ is imitated from Stolberg's _Hymne an die Erde_ was first
prefixed by J. D. Campbell in 1893.
LINENOTES:
[8] his] its F. O. 1834.
[9] that creep or rush through thy tresses F. O. 1834.
[33] on] in F. O. 1834.
[After 33]
* * * * *
F. O. 1834.
MAHOMET[329:1]
Utter the song, O my soul! the flight and return of Mohammed,
Prophet and priest, who scatter'd abroad both evil and blessing,
Huge wasteful empires founded and hallow'd slow persecution,
Soul-withering, but crush'd the blasphemous rites of the Pagan
And idolatrous Christians.--For veiling the Gospel of Jesus, 5
They, the best corrupting, had made it worse than the vilest.
Wherefore Heaven decreed th' enthusiast warrior of Mecca,
Choosing good from iniquity rather than evil from goodness.
Loud the tumult in Mecca surrounding the fane of the idol;--
Naked and prostrate the priesthood were laid--the people with mad
shouts 10
Thundering now, and now with saddest ululation
Flew, as over the channel of rock-stone the ruinous river
Shatters its waters abreast, and in mazy uproar bewilder'd,
Rushes dividuous all--all rushing impetuous onward.
? 1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[329:1] First published in 1834. In an unpublished letter to Southey,
dated Sept. 25, 1799, Coleridge writes, 'I shall go on with the
Mohammed'. There can be no doubt that these fourteen lines, which
represent Coleridge's contribution to a poem on 'Mahomet' which he had
planned in conjunction with Southey, were at that time already in
existence. For Southey's portion, which numbered 109 lines, see _Oliver
Newman_. By Robert Southey, 1845, pp. 113-15.
LOVE[330:1]
All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame.
Oft in my waking dreams do I 5
Live o'er again that happy hour,
When midway on the mount I lay,
Beside the ruined tower.
The moonshine, stealing o'er the scene
Had blended with the lights of eve; 10
And she was there, my hope, my joy,
My own dear Genevieve!
She leant against the arméd man,
The statue of the arméd knight;
She stood and listened to my lay, 15
Amid the lingering light.
Few sorrows hath she of her own,
My hope! my joy! my Genevieve!
She loves me best, whene'er I sing
The songs that make her grieve. 20
I played a soft and doleful air,
I sang an old and moving story--
An old rude song, that suited well
That ruin wild and hoary.
She listened with a flitting blush, 25
With downcast eyes and modest grace;
For well she knew, I could not choose
But gaze upon her face.
I told her of the Knight that wore
Upon his shield a burning brand; 30
And that for ten long years he wooed
The Lady of the Land.
I told her how he pined: and ah!
The deep, the low, the pleading tone
With which I sang another's love, 35
Interpreted my own.
She listened with a flitting blush,
With downcast eyes, and modest grace;
And she forgave me, that I gazed
Too fondly on her face! 40
But when I told the cruel scorn
That crazed that bold and lovely Knight,
And that he crossed the mountain-woods,
Nor rested day nor night;
That sometimes from the savage den, 45
And sometimes from the darksome shade,
And sometimes starting up at once
In green and sunny glade,--
There came and looked him in the face
An angel beautiful and bright; 50
And that he knew it was a Fiend,
This miserable Knight!
And that unknowing what he did,
He leaped amid a murderous band,
And saved from outrage worse than death 55
The Lady of the Land!
And how she wept, and clasped his knees;
And how she tended him in vain--
And ever strove to expiate
The scorn that crazed his brain;-- 60
And that she nursed him in a cave;
And how his madness went away,
When on the yellow forest-leaves
A dying man he lay;--
His dying words--but when I reached 65
That tenderest strain of all the ditty,
My faultering voice and pausing harp
Disturbed her soul with pity!
All impulses of soul and sense
Had thrilled my guileless Genevieve; 70
The music and the doleful tale,
The rich and balmy eve;
And hopes, and fears that kindle hope,
An undistinguishable throng,
And gentle wishes long subdued, 75
Subdued and cherished long!
She wept with pity and delight,
She blushed with love, and virgin-shame;
And like the murmur of a dream,
I heard her breathe my name. 80
Her bosom heaved--she stepped aside,
As conscious of my look she stepped--
Then suddenly, with timorous eye
She fled to me and wept.
She half enclosed me with her arms, 85
She pressed me with a meek embrace;
And bending back her head, looked up,
And gazed upon my face.
'Twas partly love, and partly fear,
And partly 'twas a bashful art, 90
That I might rather feel, than see,
The swelling of her heart.
I calmed her fears, and she was calm,
And told her love with virgin pride;
And so I won my Genevieve, 95
My bright and beauteous Bride.
1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[330:1] First published (with four preliminary and three concluding
stanzas) as the _Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie_, in the
_Morning Post_, Dec. 21, 1799 (for complete text with introductory
letter vide Appendices): included (as _Love_) in the _Lyrical Ballads_
of 1800, 1802, 1805: reprinted with the text of the _Morning Post_ in
_English Minstrelsy_, 1810 (ii. 131-9) with the following prefatory
note:--'These exquisite stanzas appeared some years ago in a London
Newspaper, and have since that time been republished in Mr. Wordsworth's
Lyrical Ballads, but with some alterations; the Poet having apparently
relinquished his intention of writing the Fate of the Dark Ladye':
included (as _Love_) in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1828, 1829, and 1834. The
four opening and three concluding stanzas with prefatory note were
republished in _Literary Remains_, 1836, pp. 50-2, and were first
collected in 1844. For a facsimile of the MS. of _Love_ as printed in
the _Lyrical Ballads_, 1800 (i. 138-44), see _Wordsworth and Coleridge
MSS._, edited by W. Hale White, 1897 (between pp. 34-5). For a collation
of the _Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie_ with two MSS. in the
British Museum [Add. MSS., No. 27,902] see _Coleridge's Poems_. A
Facsimile Reproduction, &c. Ed. by James Dykes Campbell, 1899, and
Appendices of this edition.
It is probable that the greater part of the _Introduction to the Tale of
the Dark Ladie_ was written either during or shortly after a visit which
Coleridge paid to the Wordsworths's friends, George and Mary, and Sarah
Hutchinson, at Sockburn, a farm-house on the banks of the Tees, in
November, 1799. In the first draft, ll. 13-16, 'She leaned, &c.' runs
thus:--
She lean'd against a grey stone rudely carv'd,
The statue of an arméd Knight:
She lean'd in melancholy mood
Amid the lingering light.
In the church at Sockburn there is a recumbent statue of an 'armed
knight' (of the Conyers family), and in a field near the farm-house
there is a 'Grey-Stone' which is said to commemorate the slaying of a
monstrous wyverne or 'worme' by the knight who is buried in the church.
It is difficult to believe that the 'arméd knight' and the 'grey stone'
of the first draft were not suggested by the statue in Sockburn Church,
and the 'Grey-Stone' in the adjoining field. It has been argued that the
_Ballad of the Dark Ladié_, of which only a fragment remains, was
written after Coleridge returned from Germany, and that the
_Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie_, which embodies _Love_, was
written at Stowey in 1797 or 1798. But in referring to 'the plan' of the
_Lyrical Ballads_ of 1798 (_Biog. Lit._, 1817, Cap. XIV, ii. 3)
Coleridge says that he had written the _Ancient Mariner_, and was
preparing the _Dark Ladie_ and the _Christabel_ (both unpublished poems
when this Chapter was written), but says nothing of so typical a poem as
_Love_. By the _Dark Ladié_ he must have meant the unfinished _Ballad of
the Dark Ladié_, which, at one time, numbered 190 lines, not the
_Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie_, which later on he refers
to as the 'poem entitled Love' (_Biog. Lit._, 1817, Cap. XXIV, ii. 298),
and which had appeared under that title in the _Lyrical Ballads_ of
1800, 1802, and 1805.
In _Sibylline Leaves_, 1828, 1829, and 1834, _Love_, which was the first
in order of a group of poems with the sub-title 'Love Poems', was
prefaced by the following motto:--
Quas humilis tenero stylus olim effudit in aevo,
Perlegis hic lacrymas, et quod pharetratus acuta
Ille puer puero fecit mihi cuspide vulnus.
Omnia paulatim consumit longior aetas,
Vivendoque simul morimur, rapimurque manendo.
Ipse mihi collatus enim non ille videbor:
Frons alia est, moresque alii, nova mentis imago,
Voxque aliud sonat--
Pectore nunc gelido calidos miseremur amantes,
Jamque arsisse pudet. Veteres tranquilla tumultus
Mens horret, relegensque alium putat ista locutum.
PETRARCH.
LINENOTES:
Title] Introduction to the Tale of the Dark Ladie M. P.: Fragment, S. T.
Coleridge English Minstrelsy, 1810.
Opening stanzas
O leave the Lilly on its stem;
O leave the Rose upon the spray;
O leave the Elder-bloom, fair Maids!
And listen to my lay.
A Cypress and a Myrtle bough,
This morn around my harp you twin'd,
Because it fashion'd mournfully
Its murmurs in the wind.
And now a Tale of Love and Woe,
A woeful Tale of Love I sing:
Hark, gentle Maidens, hark! it sighs
And trembles on the string.
But most, my own dear Genevieve!
It sighs and trembles most for thee!
O come and hear what cruel wrongs
Befel the dark Ladie.
The fifth stanza of the _Introduction_ finds its place as the fifth
stanza of the text, and the sixth stanza as the first.
[3] All are] Are all S. L. (For _Are all_ r. _All are_. _Errata_, p.
[xi]).
[5-6]
O ever in my waking dreams
I dwell upon
M. P., MS. erased.
[7] lay] sate M. P.
[15] lay] harp M. P., MS., L. B.
[21] soft] sad M. P., MS. erased.
[22] sang] sung E. M.
[23] suited] fitted M. P., MS., L. B.
[24] That ruin] The Ruin M. P., MS., L. B.: The ruins E. M.
[29] that] who M. P.
[31] that] how M. P.
[34] The low, the deep MS., L. B.
[35] In which I told E. M.
[42] That] Which MS., L. B. that] this M. P., MS., L. B.
[43] And how he roam'd M. P. that] how MS. erased.
[Between 44-5]
And how he cross'd the Woodman's paths [path E. M.]
Tho' briars and swampy mosses beat,
How boughs rebounding scourg'd his limbs,
And low stubs gor'd his feet.
M. P.
[45] That] How M. P., MS. erased.
[51] that] how M. P., MS. erased.
[53] that] how M. P., MS. erased.
[54] murderous] lawless M. P.
[59] ever] meekly M. P. For still she MS. erased.
[61] that] how M. P., MS. erased.
[78] virgin-] maiden-M. P., MS., L. B.
[79] murmur] murmurs M. P.
[Between 80-1]
{ heave
I saw her bosom { [*rise*] and swell,
Heave and swell with inward sighs--
I could not choose but love to see
Her gentle bosom rise.
M. P., MS. erased.
[81] Her wet cheek glowed M. P., MS. erased.
[84] fled] flew M. P.
[94] virgin] maiden MS. erased.
[95] so] thus M. P.
[After 96]
And now once more a tale of woe,
A woeful tale of love I sing;
For thee, my Genevieve! it sighs,
And trembles on the string.
When last I sang [sung E. M.] the cruel scorn
That craz'd this bold and lonely [lovely E. M.] knight,
And how he roam'd the mountain woods,
Nor rested day or night;
I promis'd thee a sister tale
Of Man's perfidious Cruelty;
Come, then, and hear what cruel wrong
Befel the Dark Ladie.
_End of the Introduction_ M. P.
ODE TO GEORGIANA, DUCHESS OF DEVONSHIRE[335:1]
ON THE TWENTY-FOURTH STANZA IN HER 'PASSAGE OVER MOUNT GOTHARD'
And hail the Chapel! hail the Platform wild!
Where Tell directed the avenging dart,
With well-strung arm, that first preservst his child,
Then aim'd the arrow at the tyrant's heart.
Splendour's fondly-fostered child!
And did you hail the platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure! 5
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?
Light as a dream your days their circlets ran,
From all that teaches brotherhood to Man
Far, far removed! from want, from hope, from fear!
Enchanting music lulled your infant ear, 10
Obeisance, praises soothed your infant heart:
Emblazonments and old ancestral crests,
With many a bright obtrusive form of art,
Detained your eye from Nature: stately vests,
That veiling strove to deck your charms divine, 15
Rich viands, and the pleasurable wine,
Were yours unearned by toil; nor could you see
The unenjoying toiler's misery.
And yet, free Nature's uncorrupted child,
You hailed the Chapel and the Platform wild, 20
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?
There crowd your finely-fibred frame 25
All living faculties of bliss;
And Genius to your cradle came,
His forehead wreathed with lambent flame,
And bending low, with godlike kiss
Breath'd in a more celestial life; 30
But boasts not many a fair compeer
A heart as sensitive to joy and fear?
And some, perchance, might wage an equal strife,
Some few, to nobler being wrought,
Corrivals in the nobler gift of thought. 35
Yet these delight to celebrate
Laurelled War and plumy State;
Or in verse and music dress
Tales of rustic happiness--
Pernicious tales! insidious strains! 40
That steel the rich man's breast,
And mock the lot unblest,
The sordid vices and the abject pains,
Which evermore must be
The doom of ignorance and penury! 45
But you, free Nature's uncorrupted child,
You hailed the Chapel and the Platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure! 50
Whence learn'd you that heroic measure?
You were a Mother! That most holy name,
Which Heaven and Nature bless,
I may not vilely prostitute to those
Whose infants owe them less 55
Than the poor caterpillar owes
Its gaudy parent fly.
You were a mother! at your bosom fed
The babes that loved you. You, with laughing eye,
Each twilight-thought, each nascent feeling read, 60
Which you yourself created. Oh! delight!
A second time to be a mother,
Without the mother's bitter groans:
Another thought, and yet another,
By touch, or taste, by looks or tones, 65
O'er the growing sense to roll,
The mother of your infant's soul!
The Angel of the Earth, who, while he guides[337:1]
His chariot-planet round the goal of day,
All trembling gazes on the eye of God 70
A moment turned his awful face away;
And as he viewed you, from his aspect sweet
New influences in your being rose,
Blest intuitions and communions fleet
With living Nature, in her joys and woes! 75
Thenceforth your soul rejoiced to see
The shrine of social Liberty!
O beautiful! O Nature's child!
'Twas thence you hailed the Platform wild,
Where once the Austrian fell 80
Beneath the shaft of Tell!
O Lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure!
Thence learn'd you that heroic measure.
1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[335:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, December 24, 1799 (in
four numbered stanzas): included in the _Annual Anthology_, 1800, in
_Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. The Duchess's poem
entitled 'Passage over Mount Gothard' was published in the _Morning
Chronicle_ on Dec. 20 and in the _Morning Post_, Dec. 21, 1799.
[337:1] In a copy of the _Annual Anthology_ Coleridge drew his pen
through ll. 68-77, but the lines appeared in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817,
and in all later editions (see _P. W._, 1898, p. 624).
LINENOTES:
_Ode to Georgiana_, &c.--Motto 4
Then wing'd the arrow to
M. P., An. Anth.
Sub-title] On the 24{th} stanza in her Poem, entitled 'The Passage of
the Mountain of St. Gothard.' M. P.
[1-2]
Lady, Splendor's foster'd child
And did _you_
M. P.
[2] you] _you_ An. Anth.
[7] your years their courses M. P.
[9] Ah! far remov'd from want and hope and fear M. P.
[11] Obeisant praises M. P.
[14] stately] gorgeous M. P.
[15] om. An. Anth.
[31 foll.]
But many of your many fair compeers
[But many of thy many fair compeers M. P.]
Have frames as sensible of joys and fears;
And some might wage an equal strife
An. Anth.
[34-5]
(Some few perchance to nobler being wrought),
Corrivals in the plastic powers of thought.
M. P.
[35] Corrivals] co-rivals An. Anth., S. L. 1828.
[36] these] _these_ S. L. 1828, 1829.
[40] insidious] insulting M. P.
[45] penury] poverty M. P., An. Anth.
[47] Hail'd the low Chapel M. P., An. Anth.
[51] Whence] Where An. Anth., S. L. 1828, 1829.
[56] caterpillar] Reptile M. P., An. Anth.
[60] each] and M. P.
[72] you] thee M. P.
[73] your] thy M. P.
[76] O Lady thence ye joy'd to see M. P.
A CHRISTMAS CAROL[338:1]
I
The shepherds went their hasty way,
And found the lowly stable-shed
Where the Virgin-Mother lay:
And now they checked their eager tread,
For to the Babe, that at her bosom clung, 5
A Mother's song the Virgin-Mother sung.
II
They told her how a glorious light,
Streaming from a heavenly throng,
Around them shone, suspending night!
While sweeter than a mother's song, 10
Blest Angels heralded the Saviour's birth,
Glory to God on high! and Peace on Earth.
III
She listened to the tale divine,
And closer still the Babe she pressed;
And while she cried, the Babe is mine! 15
The milk rushed faster to her breast:
Joy rose within her, like a summer's morn;
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.
IV
Thou Mother of the Prince of Peace,
Poor, simple, and of low estate! 20
That strife should vanish, battle cease,
O why should this thy soul elate?
Sweet Music's loudest note, the Poet's story,--
Didst thou ne'er love to hear of fame and glory?
V
And is not War a youthful king, 25
A stately Hero clad in mail?
Beneath his footsteps laurels spring;
Him Earth's majestic monarchs hail
Their friend, their playmate! and his bold bright eye
Compels the maiden's love-confessing sigh. 30
VI
'Tell this in some more courtly scene,
To maids and youths in robes of state!
I am a woman poor and mean,
And therefore is my soul elate.
War is a ruffian, all with guilt defiled, 35
That from the agéd father tears his child!
VII
'A murderous fiend, by fiends adored,
He kills the sire and starves the son;
The husband kills, and from her board
Steals all his widow's toil had won; 40
Plunders God's world of beauty; rends away
All safety from the night, all comfort from the day.
VIII
'Then wisely is my soul elate,
That strife should vanish, battle cease:
I'm poor and of a low estate, 45
The Mother of the Prince of Peace.
Joy rises in me, like a summer's morn:
Peace, Peace on Earth! the Prince of Peace is born.'
1799.
FOOTNOTES:
[338:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, December 25, 1799:
included in the _Annual Anthology_, 1800, in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817,
1828, 1829, and 1834.
LINENOTES:
_A Christmas Carol_--8: a] an M. P., An. Anth.
[10] While] And M. P.
[35] War is a ruffian Thief, with gore defil'd M. P., An.
Anth.
[37] fiend] Thief M. P., An. Anth.
[41] rends] tears M. P.
[After 49]
Strange prophecy! Could half the screams
Of half the men that since have died
To realise War's kingly dreams,
Have risen at once in one vast tide,
The choral music of Heav'n's multitude
Had been o'erpower'd, and lost amid the uproar rude!
ESTEESI.
M. P., An. Anth.
TALLEYRAND TO LORD GRENVILLE[340:1]
A METRICAL EPISTLE
[As printed in _Morning Post_ for January 10, 1800.]
To the Editor of _The Morning Post_.
MR. EDITOR,--An unmetrical letter from Talleyrand to Lord
Grenville has already appeared, and from an authority too high
to be questioned: otherwise I could adduce some arguments for
the exclusive authenticity of the following metrical epistle.
The very epithet which the wise ancients used, '_aurea
carmina_,' might have been supposed likely to have determined
the choice of the French minister in favour of verse; and the
rather when we recollect that this phrase of '_golden verses_'
is applied emphatically to the works of that philosopher who
imposed _silence_ on all with whom he had to deal. Besides is
it not somewhat improbable that Talleyrand should have
preferred prose to rhyme, when the latter alone _has got the
chink_? Is it not likewise curious that in our official answer
no notice whatever is taken of the Chief Consul, Bonaparte, as
if there had been no such person [man _Essays, &c., 1850_]
existing; notwithstanding that his existence is pretty
generally admitted, nay that some have been so rash as to
believe that he has created as great a sensation in the world
as Lord Grenville, or even the Duke of Portland? But the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Talleyrand, is acknowledged,
which, in our opinion, could not have happened had he written
only that insignificant prose-letter, which seems to precede
Bonaparte's, as in old romances a dwarf always ran before to
proclaim the advent or arrival of knight or giant. That
Talleyrand's character and practices more resemble those of
some _regular_ Governments than Bonaparte's I admit; but this
of itself does not appear a satisfactory explanation. However,
let the letter speak for itself. The second line is
supererogative in syllables, whether from the oscitancy of the
transcriber, or from the trepidation which might have
overpowered the modest Frenchman, on finding himself in the
act of writing to so _great_ a man, I shall not dare to
determine. A few Notes are added by
Your servant,
GNOME.
_P.S._--As mottoes are now fashionable, especially if taken
from out of the way books, you may prefix, if you please, the
following lines from Sidonius Apollinaris:
'Saxa, et robora, corneasque fibras
Mollit dulciloquâ canorus arte!'
TALLEYRAND, MINISTER OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS AT PARIS, TO LORD GRENVILLE,
SECRETARY OF STATE IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS, AUDITOR OF THE
EXCHEQUER, A LORD OF TRADE, AN ELDER BROTHER OF TRINITY HOUSE, ETC.
My Lord! though your Lordship repel deviation
From forms long establish'd, yet with high consideration,
I plead for the honour to hope that no blame
Will attach, should this letter _begin_ with my name.
I dar'd not presume on your Lordship to bounce, 5
But thought it more _exquisite_ first to _announce_!
My Lord! I've the honour to be Talleyrand,
And the letter's from _me_! you'll not draw back your hand
Nor yet take it up by the rim in dismay,
As boys pick up ha'pence on April fool-day. 10
I'm no Jacobin foul, or red-hot Cordelier
That your Lordship's _un_gauntleted fingers need fear
An infection or burn! Believe me, 'tis true,
With a scorn like another I look down on the crew
That bawl and hold up to the mob's detestation 15
The most delicate wish for a _silent persuasion_.
_A form long-establish'd_ these Terrorists call
Bribes, perjury, theft, and the devil and all!
And yet spite of all that the Moralist[341:1] prates,
'Tis the keystone and cement of _civilized States_. 20
Those American _Reps_![342:1] And i' faith, they were serious!
It shock'd us at Paris, like something mysterious,
That men who've a Congress--But no more of 't! I'm proud
To have stood so distinct from the Jacobin crowd.
My Lord! though the vulgar in wonder be lost at 25
My transfigurations, and name me _Apostate_,
Such a meaningless nickname, which never incens'd me,
_Cannot_ prejudice you or your Cousin against me:
I'm Ex-bishop. What then? Burke himself would agree
That I left not the Church--'twas the Church that left me.
My titles prelatic I lov'd and retain'd, 31
As long as what _I_ meant by Prelate remain'd:
And tho' Mitres no longer will _pass_ in our mart,
I'm _episcopal_ still to the core of my heart.
No time from my name this my motto shall sever: 35
'Twill be _Non sine pulvere palma_[342:2] for ever!
Your goodness, my Lord, I conceive as excessive,
Or I dar'd not present you a scroll so digressive;
And in truth with my pen thro' and thro' I should strike it;
But I hear that your Lordship's own style is just like it. 40
Dear my Lord, we are right: for what charms can be shew'd
In a thing that goes straight like an old Roman road?
The tortoise crawls straight, the hare doubles about;
And the true line of beauty still winds in and out.
It argues, my Lord! of fine thoughts such a brood in us 45
To split and divide into heads multitudinous,
While charms that surprise (it can ne'er be denied us)
Sprout forth from each head, like the ears from King Midas.
Were a genius of rank, like a commonplace dunce,
Compell'd to drive on to the main point at once, 50
What a plentiful vintage of initiations[342:3]
Would Noble Lords lose in your Lordship's orations.
My fancy transports me! As mute as a mouse,
And as fleet as a pigeon, I'm borne to the house
Where all those who _are_ Lords, from father to son, 55
Discuss the affairs of all those who are none.
I behold you, my Lord! of your feelings quite full,
'Fore the woolsack arise, like a sack full of wool!
You rise on each Anti-Grenvillian Member,
Short, thick and blustrous, like a day in November![343:1] 60
Short in person, I mean: for the length of your speeches
Fame herself, that most famous reporter, ne'er reaches.
Lo! Patience beholds you contemn her brief reign,
And Time, that all-panting toil'd after in vain,
(Like the Beldam who raced for a smock with her grand-child) 65
Drops and cries: 'Were such lungs e'er assign'd to a man-child?'
Your strokes at her vitals pale Truth has confess'd,
And Zeal unresisted entempests your breast![343:2]
Though some noble Lords may be wishing to sup,
Your merit self-conscious, my Lord, _keeps you up_, 70
Unextinguish'd and swoln, as a balloon of paper
Keeps aloft by the smoke of its own farthing taper.
Ye SIXTEENS[343:3] of Scotland, your snuffs ye must trim;
Your Geminies, fix'd stars of England! grow dim,
And but for _a form long-establish'd_, no doubt 75
Twinkling faster and faster, ye all would _go out_.
_Apropos_, my dear Lord! a ridiculous blunder
Of some of our Journalists caused us some wonder:
It was said that in aspect malignant and sinister
In the Isle of Great Britain a great Foreign Minister 80
Turn'd as pale as a journeyman miller's frock coat is
On observing a star that appear'd in BOOTES!
When the whole truth was this (O those ignorant brutes!)
Your Lordship had made his appearance in boots.
You, my Lord, with your star, sat in boots, and the Spanish
Ambassador thereupon thought fit to vanish. 86
But perhaps, dear my Lord, among other worse crimes,
The whole was no more than a lie of _The Times_.
It is monstrous, my Lord! in a civilis'd state
That such Newspaper rogues should have license to prate. 90
Indeed printing in general--but for the taxes,
Is in theory false and pernicious in praxis!
You and I, and your Cousin, and Abbé Sieyes,
And all the great Statesmen that live in these days,
Are agreed that no nation secure is from vi'lence 95
Unless all who must think are maintain'd all in silence.
This printing, my Lord--but 'tis useless to mention
What we both of us think--'twas a curséd invention,
And Germany might have been honestly prouder
Had she left it alone, and found out only powder. 100
My Lord! when I think of our labours and cares
Who rule the Department of foreign affairs,
And how with their libels these journalists bore us,
Though Rage I acknowledge than Scorn less decorous;
Yet their presses and types I could shiver in splinters, 105
Those Printers' black Devils! those Devils of Printers!
In case of a peace--but perhaps it were better
To proceed to the absolute point of my letter:
For the deep wounds of France, Bonaparte, my master,
Has found out a new sort of _basilicon_ plaister. 110
But your time, my dear Lord! is your nation's best treasure,
I've intruded already too long on your leisure;
If so, I entreat you with penitent sorrow
To pause, and resume the remainder to-morrow.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[340:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, January 10, 1800:
reprinted in _Essays on His Own Times_, 1850, i. 233-7. First collected
_P. and D. W._, 1877, 1880.
[341:1] This sarcasm on the writings of moralists is, in general,
extremely just; but had Talleyrand continued long enough in England, he
might have found an honourable exception in the second volume of Dr.
Paley's _Moral Philosophy_; in which both Secret Influence, and all the
other _Established Forms_, are justified and placed in their true light.
[342:1] A fashionable abbreviation in the higher circles for
Republicans. Thus _Mob_ was originally the Mobility.
[342:2] _Palma non sine pulvere_ In plain English, an itching palm, not
without the yellow dust.
[342:3] The word _Initiations_ is borrowed from the new Constitution,
and can only mean, in plain English, introductory matter. If the
manuscript would bear us out, we should propose to read the line thus:
'What a plentiful _Verbage_, what Initiations!' inasmuch as Vintage must
necessarily refer to wine, really or figuratively; and we cannot guess
what species Lord Grenville's eloquence may be supposed to resemble,
unless, indeed, it be _Cowslip_ wine. A slashing critic to whom we read
the manuscript, proposed to read, 'What a plenty of Flowers--what
initiations!' and supposes it may allude indiscriminately to Poppy
Flowers, or Flour of Brimstone. The most modest emendation, perhaps,
would be this--for Vintage read Ventage.
[343:1] We cannot sufficiently admire the accuracy of this simile. For
as Lord Grenville, though short, is certainly not the shortest man in
the House, even so is it with the days in November.
[343:2] An evident plagiarism of the Ex-Bishop's from Dr. Johnson:--
'Existence saw him spurn her bounded reign,
And panting Time toil'd after him in vain:
His pow'rful strokes presiding Truth confess'd,
And unresisting Passion storm'd the breast.'
[343:3] This line and the following are involved in an almost
Lycophrontic tenebricosity. On repeating them, however, to an
_Illuminant_, whose confidence I possess, he informed me (and he ought
to know, for he is a Tallow-chandler by trade) that certain candles go
by the name of _sixteens_. This explains the whole, the Scotch Peers are
destined to burn out--and so are candles! The English are perpetual, and
are therefore styled Fixed Stars! The word _Geminies_ is, we confess,
still obscure to us; though we venture to suggest that it may perhaps be
a metaphor (daringly sublime) for the two eyes which noble Lords do in
general possess. It is certainly used by the poet Fletcher in this
sense, in the 31st stanza of his _Purple Island_:--
'What! shall I then need seek a patron out,
Or beg a favour from a mistress' eyes,
To fence my song against the vulgar rout,
And shine upon me with her _geminies_?'
LINENOTES:
[14] With a scorn, like your own Essay, &c., 1850.
APOLOGIA PRO VITA SUA[345:1]
The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size--
In unctuous cones of kindling coal, 5
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim hole,
His gifted ken can see
Phantoms of sublimity.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[345:1] Included in the text of _The Historie and Gests of Maxilian_:
first published in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, January, 1822, vol.
xi, p. 12. The lines were taken from a MS. note-book, dated August 28,
1800. First collected _P. and D. W._, 1877-80.
LINENOTES:
Title] The Poet's ken P. W., 1885: Apologia, &c. 1907.
[1-4]
The poet's eye in his tipsy hour
Hath a magnifying power
Or rather emancipates his eyes
Of the accidents of size
MS.
[5] cones] cone MS.
[6] Or smoke from his pipe's bole MS.
[7] His eye can see MS.
THE KEEPSAKE[345:2]
The tedded hay, the first fruits of the soil,
The tedded hay and corn-sheaves in one field,
Show summer gone, ere come. The foxglove tall
Sheds its loose purple bells, or in the gust,
Or when it bends beneath the up-springing lark, 5
Or mountain-finch alighting. And the rose
(In vain the darling of successful love)
Stands, like some boasted beauty of past years,
The thorns remaining, and the flowers all gone.
Nor can I find, amid my lonely walk 10
By rivulet, or spring, or wet roadside,
That blue and bright-eyed floweret of the brook,
Hope's gentle gem, the sweet Forget-me-not![346:1]
So will not fade the flowers which Emmeline
With delicate fingers on the snow-white silk 15
Has worked (the flowers which most she knew I loved),
And, more beloved than they, her auburn hair.
In the cool morning twilight, early waked
By her full bosom's joyous restlessness,
Softly she rose, and lightly stole along, 20
Down the slope coppice to the woodbine bower,
Whose rich flowers, swinging in the morning breeze,
Over their dim fast-moving shadows hung,
Making a quiet image of disquiet
In the smooth, scarcely moving river-pool. 25
There, in that bower where first she owned her love,
And let me kiss my own warm tear of joy
From off her glowing cheek, she sate and stretched
The silk upon the frame, and worked her name
Between the Moss-Rose and Forget-me-not-- 30
Her own dear name, with her own auburn hair!
That forced to wander till sweet spring return,
I yet might ne'er forget her smile, her look,
Her voice, (that even in her mirthful mood
Has made me wish to steal away and weep,) 35
Nor yet the enhancement of that maiden kiss
With which she promised, that when spring returned,
She would resign one half of that dear name,
And own thenceforth no other name but mine!
? 1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[345:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, September 17, 1802
(signed, ΕΣΤΗΣΕ): included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829,
1834. 'It had been composed two years before' (1802), _Note_, 1893, p.
624. Mr. Campbell may have seen a dated MS. Internal evidence would
point to the autumn of 1802, when it was published in the _Morning
Post_.
[346:1] One of the names (and meriting to be the only one) of the
_Myosotis Scorpioides Palustris_, a flower from six to twelve inches
high, with blue blossom and bright yellow eye. It has the same name over
the whole Empire of Germany (_Vergissmeinnicht_) and, we believe, in
Denmark and Sweden.
LINENOTES:
[1] om. M. P.
[2] one] _one_ M. P.
[12] Line 13 precedes line 12 M. P.
[17] they] all M. P.
[19] joyous] joyless S. L. 1828.
[19-21]
joyous restlessness,
Leaving the soft bed to her sister,
Softly she rose, and lightly stole along,
Her fair face flushing in the purple dawn,
Adown the meadow to the woodbine bower
M. P.
[Between 19-20] Leaving the soft bed to her sleeping sister S. L. 1817.
[25] scarcely moving] scarcely-flowing M. P.
[39] thenceforth] henceforth M. P.
A THOUGHT SUGGESTED BY A VIEW[347:1]
OF SADDLEBACK IN CUMBERLAND
On stern Blencartha's perilous height
The winds are tyrannous and strong;
And flashing forth unsteady light
From stern Blencartha's skiey height,
As loud the torrents throng! 5
Beneath the moon, in gentle weather,
They bind the earth and sky together.
But oh! the sky and all its forms, how quiet!
The things that seek the earth, how full of noise and riot!
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[347:1] First published in the _Amulet_, 1833, reprinted in
_Friendship's Offering_, 1834: included in _Essays on His Own Times_,
1850, iii. 997. First collected in _P. and D. W._, 1877-80. These lines
are inserted in one of the Malta Notebooks, and appear from the context
to have been written at Olevano in 1806; but it is almost certain that
they belong to the autumn of 1800 when Coleridge made a first
acquaintance of 'Blencathara's rugged coves'. The first line is an
adaptation of a line in a poem of Isaac Ritson, quoted in Hutchinson's
_History of Cumberland_, a work which supplied him with some of the
place-names in the Second Part of _Christabel_. Compare, too, a sentence
in a letter to Sir H. Davy of Oct. 18, 1800:--'At the bottom of the
Carrock Man . . . the wind became so fearful and _tyrannous_, etc.'
LINENOTES:
Title] A Versified Reflection F. O. 1834. In F. O. 1834, the lines were
prefaced by a note:--[A Force is the provincial term in Cumberland for
any narrow fall of water from the summit of a mountain precipice. The
following stanza (it may not arrogate the name of poem) or versified
reflection was composed while the author was gazing on three parallel
_Forces_ on a moonlight night, at the foot of the Saddleback Fell. _S.
T. C._] A ---- by the view of Saddleback, near Threlkeld in Cumberland,
Essays, &c.
[1] Blencartha's] Blenkarthur's MS.: Blencarthur's F. O.: Blenharthur's
Essays, &c., 1850.
[2] The wind is F. O.
[4] Blencartha's] Blenkarthur's MS.: Blencarthur's F. O.: Blenharthur's
Essays, &c., 1850.
[8] oh!] ah! Essays, &c.
THE MAD MONK[347:2]
I heard a voice from Etna's side;
Where o'er a cavern's mouth
That fronted to the south
A chesnut spread its umbrage wide:
A hermit or a monk the man might be; 5
But him I could not see:
And thus the music flow'd along,
In melody most like to old Sicilian song:
'There was a time when earth, and sea, and skies,
The bright green vale, and forest's dark recess, 10
With all things, lay before mine eyes
In steady loveliness:
But now I feel, on earth's uneasy scene,
Such sorrows as will never cease;--
I only ask for peace; 15
If I must live to know that such a time has been!'
A silence then ensued:
Till from the cavern came
A voice;--it was the same!
And thus, in mournful tone, its dreary plaint renew'd: 20
'Last night, as o'er the sloping turf I trod,
The smooth green turf, to me a vision gave
Beneath mine eyes, the sod--
The roof of Rosa's grave!
My heart has need with dreams like these to strive, 25
For, when I woke, beneath mine eyes I found
The plot of mossy ground,
On which we oft have sat when Rosa was alive.--
Why must the rock, and margin of the flood,
Why must the hills so many flow'rets bear, 30
Whose colours to a _murder'd_ maiden's blood,
Such sad resemblance wear?--
'_I struck the wound_,--this hand of mine!
For Oh, thou maid divine,
I lov'd to agony! 35
The youth whom thou call'd'st thine
Did never love like me!
'Is it the stormy clouds above
That flash'd so red a gleam?
On yonder downward trickling stream?-- 40
'Tis not the blood of her I love.--
The sun torments me from his western bed,
Oh, let him cease for ever to diffuse
Those crimson spectre hues!
Oh, let me lie in peace, and be for ever dead!' 45
Here ceas'd the voice. In deep dismay,
Down thro' the forest I pursu'd my way.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[347:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, October 13, 1800 (signed
_Cassiani junior_): reprinted in _Wild Wreath_ (By M. E. Robinson),
1804, pp. 141-4. First collected in _P. W._, 1880 (ii, Supplement, p.
362).
LINENOTES:
Title] The Voice from the Side of Etna; or the Mad Monk: An Ode in Mrs.
Ratcliff's Manner M. P.
[8] to] an M. P.
[14] sorrows] motions M. P.
[16] Then wherefore must I know M. P.
[23] I saw the sod M. P.
[26] woke] wak'd M. P.
[27] The] That M. P.
[28] On which so oft we sat M. P.
[31] a wounded woman's blood M. P.
[38-9]
It is the stormy clouds above
That flash
M. P.
[After 47]
The twilight fays came forth in dewy shoon
Ere I within the Cabin had withdrawn
The goatherd's tent upon the open lawn--
That night there was no moon.
M. P.
INSCRIPTION FOR A SEAT BY THE ROAD SIDE HALF-WAY UP A STEEP HILL FACING
SOUTH[349:1]
Thou who in youthful vigour rich, and light
With youthful thoughts dost need no rest! O thou,
To whom alike the valley and the hill
Present a path of ease! Should e'er thine eye
Glance on this sod, and this rude tablet, stop! 5
'Tis a rude spot, yet here, with thankful hearts,
The foot-worn soldier and his family
Have rested, wife and babe, and boy, perchance
Some eight years old or less, and scantly fed,
Garbed like his father, and already bound 10
To his poor father's trade. Or think of him
Who, laden with his implements of toil,
Returns at night to some far distant home,
And having plodded on through rain and mire
With limbs o'erlaboured, weak from feverish heat, 15
And chafed and fretted by December blasts,
Here pauses, thankful he hath reached so far,
And 'mid the sheltering warmth of these bleak trees
Finds restoration--or reflect on those
Who in the spring to meet the warmer sun 20
Crawl up this steep hill-side, that needlessly
Bends double their weak frames, already bowed
By age or malady, and when, at last,
They gain this wished-for turf, this seat of sods,
Repose--and, well-admonished, ponder here 25
On final rest. And if a serious thought
Should come uncalled--how soon _thy_ motions high,
Thy balmy spirits and thy fervid blood
Must change to feeble, withered, cold and dry,
Cherish the wholesome sadness! And where'er 30
The tide of Life impel thee, O be prompt
To make thy present strength the staff of all,
Their staff and resting-place--so shalt thou give
To Youth the sweetest joy that Youth can know;
And for thy future self thou shalt provide 35
Through every change of various life, a seat,
Not built by hands, on which thy inner part,
Imperishable, many a grievous hour,
Or bleak or sultry may repose--yea, sleep
The sleep of Death, and dream of blissful worlds, 40
Then wake in Heaven, and find the dream all true.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[349:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, October 21, 1800
(Coleridge's birthday) under the signature VENTIFRONS: reprinted in the
_Lake Herald_, November 2, 1906. Now first included in Coleridge's
_Poetical Works_. Venti Frons is dog-Latin for Windy Brow, a point of
view immediately above the River Greta, on the lower slope of Latrigg.
Here it was that on Wednesday, August 13, 1800, Wordsworth, his sister
Dorothy, and Coleridge 'made the Windy Brow seat'--a 'seat of sods'. In
a letter to his printers, Biggs and Cottle, of October 10, 1800,
Wordsworth says that 'a friend [the author of the _Ancient Mariner_,
&c.] has also furnished me with a few of these Poems in the second
volume [of the _Lyrical Ballads_] which are classed under the title of
"Poems on the Naming of Places"' (_Wordsworth and Coleridge MSS._, Ed.
W. Hale White, 1897, pp. 27, 28). No such poems or poem appeared, and it
has been taken for granted that none were ever written. At any rate
_one_ 'Inscription', now at last forthcoming, was something more than a
'story from the land of dreams'!
A STRANGER MINSTREL[350:1]
WRITTEN [TO MRS. ROBINSON,] A FEW WEEKS BEFORE HER DEATH
As late on Skiddaw's mount I lay supine,
Midway th' ascent, in that repose divine
When the soul centred in the heart's recess
Hath quaff'd its fill of Nature's loveliness,
Yet still beside the fountain's marge will stay 5
And fain would thirst again, again to quaff;
Then when the tear, slow travelling on its way,
Fills up the wrinkles of a silent laugh--
In that sweet mood of sad and humorous thought
A form within me rose, within me wrought 10
With such strong magic, that I cried aloud,
'Thou ancient Skiddaw by thy helm of cloud,
And by thy many-colour'd chasms deep,
And by their shadows that for ever sleep,
By yon small flaky mists that love to creep 15
Along the edges of those spots of light,
Those sunny islands on thy smooth green height,
And by yon shepherds with their sheep,
And dogs and boys, a gladsome crowd,
That rush e'en now with clamour loud 20
Sudden from forth thy topmost cloud,
And by this laugh, and by this tear,
I would, old Skiddaw, she were here!
A lady of sweet song is she,
Her soft blue eye was made for thee! 25
O ancient Skiddaw, by this tear,
I would, I would that she were here!'
Then ancient Skiddaw, stern and proud,
In sullen majesty replying,
Thus spake from out his helm of cloud 30
(His voice was like an echo dying!):--
'She dwells belike in scenes more fair,
And scorns a mount so bleak and bare.'
I only sigh'd when this I heard,
Such mournful thoughts within me stirr'd 35
That all my heart was faint and weak,
So sorely was I troubled!
No laughter wrinkled on my cheek,
But O the tears were doubled!
But ancient Skiddaw green and high 40
Heard and understood my sigh;
And now, in tones less stern and rude,
As if he wish'd to end the feud,
Spake he, the proud response renewing
(His voice was like a monarch wooing):-- 45
'Nay, but thou dost not know her might,
The pinions of her soul how strong!
But many a stranger in my height
Hath sung to me her magic song,
Sending forth his ecstasy 50
In her divinest melody,
And hence I know her soul is free,
She is where'er she wills to be,
Unfetter'd by mortality!
Now to the "haunted beach" can fly,[352:1] 55
Beside the threshold scourged with waves,
Now where the maniac wildly raves,
"_Pale moon, thou spectre of the sky!_"[352:2]
No wind that hurries o'er my height
Can travel with so swift a flight. 60
I too, methinks, might merit
The presence of her spirit!
To me too might belong
The honour of her song and witching melody,
Which most resembles me, 65
Soft, various, and sublime,
Exempt from wrongs of Time!'
Thus spake the mighty Mount, and I
Made answer, with a deep-drawn sigh:--
Thou ancient Skiddaw, by this tear, 70
I would, I would that she were here!'
_November_, 1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[350:1] First published in _Memoirs of the late Mrs. Robinson_, Written
by herself. With some Posthumous Pieces, 1801, iv. 141: reprinted in
_Poetical Works of the late Mrs. Mary Robinson_, 1806, i. xlviii, li.
First collected in _P. W._, 1877-80.
[352:1] 'The Haunted Beach,' by Mrs. Robinson, was included in the
_Annual Anthology_ for 1800.
[352:2] From 'Jasper', a ballad by Mrs. Robinson, included in the
_Annual Anthology_ for 1800.
LINENOTES:
[1] Skiddaw's] Skiddaw 1801.
[8] wrinkles] wrinkle 1801.
[13] chasms so deep 1801.
[17] sunny] sunshine 1801.
[32] in] by 1801.
[38] on] now 1801.
[57] Now to the maniac while he raves 1801.
ALCAEUS TO SAPPHO[353:1]
How sweet, when crimson colours dart
Across a breast of snow,
To see that you are in the heart
That beats and throbs below.
All Heaven is in a maiden's blush, 5
In which the soul doth speak,
That it was you who sent the flush
Into the maiden's cheek.
Large steadfast eyes! eyes gently rolled
In shades of changing blue, 10
How sweet are they, if they behold
No dearer sight than you.
And, can a lip more richly glow,
Or be more fair than this?
The world will surely answer, No! 15
I, SAPPHO, answer, Yes!
Then grant one smile, tho' it should mean
A thing of doubtful birth;
That I may say these eyes have seen
The fairest face on earth! 20
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[353:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, November 24, 1800:
reprinted in _Letters from the Lake Poets_, 1889, p. 16. It is probable
that these lines, sent in a letter to Daniel Stuart (Editor of the
_Morning Post_), dated October 7, 1800, were addressed to Mrs. Robinson,
who was a frequent contributor of verses signed 'Sappho'. A sequence of
Sonnets entitled 'Sappho to Phaon' is included in the collected edition
of her _Poems_, 1806, iii. 63-107.
THE TWO ROUND SPACES ON THE TOMBSTONE[353:2]
The Devil believes that the Lord will come,
Stealing a march without beat of drum,
About the same time that he came last,
On an Old Christmas-day in a snowy blast:
Till he bids the trump sound neither body nor soul stirs, 5
For the dead men's heads have slipt under their bolsters.
Oh! ho! brother Bard, in our churchyard,
Both beds and bolsters are soft and green;
Save one alone, and that's of stone,
And under it lies a Counsellor keen. 10
'Twould be a square tomb, if it were not too long;
And 'tis fenced round with irons sharp, spear-like, and strong.
This fellow from Aberdeen hither did skip
With a waxy face and a blubber lip,
And a black tooth in front, to show in part 15
What was the colour of his whole heart.
This Counsellor sweet,
This Scotchman complete,
(The Devil scotch him for a snake!)
I trust he lies in his grave awake. 20
On the sixth of January,
When all around is white with snow,
As a Cheshire yeoman's dairy,
Brother Bard, ho! ho! believe it, or no,
On that stone tomb to you I'll show 25
Two round spaces void of snow.
I swear by our Knight, and his forefathers' souls,
That in size and shape they are just like the holes
In the house of privity
Of that ancient family. 30
On those two places void of snow,
There have sat in the night for an hour or so,
Before sunrise, and after cock-crow,
He kicking his heels, she cursing her corns,
All to the tune of the wind in their horns, 35
The Devil and his Grannam,
With a snow-blast to fan 'em;
Expecting and hoping the trumpet to blow,
For they are cock-sure of the fellow below!
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[353:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, December 4, 1800:
reprinted in _Fraser's Magazine_ both in February and in May, 1833, and
in Payne Collier's _Old Man's Diary_, i. 35. First collected in _P. W._,
1834, with the following Prefatory Note:--'See the apology for the
"Fire, Famine, and Slaughter", in first volume. This is the first time
the author ever published these lines. He would have been glad, had they
perished; but they have now been printed repeatedly in magazines, and he
is told that the verses will not perish. Here, therefore, they are
owned, with a hope that they will be taken--as assuredly they were
composed--in mere sport.' These lines, which were directed against Sir
James Mackintosh, were included in a letter to [Sir] Humphry Davy, dated
October 9, 1800. There is a MS. version in the British Museum in the
handwriting of R. Heber, presented by him to J. Mitford. Mr. Campbell
questions the accuracy of Coleridge's statement with regard to his never
having published the poem on his own account. But it is possible that
Davy may have sent the lines to the Press without Coleridge's authority.
Daniel Stuart, the Editor of the _Morning Post_, in the _Gentleman's
Magazine_ for May, 1838, says that 'Coleridge sent one [poem] attacking
Mackintosh, too obviously for me not to understand it, and of course it
was not published. Mackintosh had had one of his front teeth broken and
the stump was black'. Stuart remembered that the lines attacking his
brother-in-law had been suppressed, but forgot that he had inserted the
rest of the poem. The poem as printed in 1893, despite the heading, does
not follow the text of the _Morning Post_.
LINENOTES:
Title] Skeltoniad (To be read in the Recitative Lilt) MS. Letter: The
Two Round Spaces; A Skeltoniad M. P.
[1] The Devil believes the Fraser (1).
[3] time] hour MS. Letter, M. P., Fraser (1), Collier. At the same hour
MS. H.
[4] an Old] a cold Fraser (1): On Old MS. H.
[5] neither] nor MS. Letter, M. P.: Till he bids the trump blow nor
Fraser (2): Till the trump then shall sound no Collier: Until that time
not a body or MS. H.
[6] their] the Collier.
[7] Oh! ho!] Ho! Ho! M. P., MS. H.: Oho Fraser (1). Brother Collier.
our] _our_ MS. Letter.
[8] Both bed and bolster Fraser (2). The graves and bolsters MS. H.
[9] Except one alone MS. H.
[10] under] in Fraser (2).
[11] This tomb would be square M. P.: 'Twould be a square stone if it
were not so long Fraser (1). It would be square MS. H. tomb] grave
Collier.
[12] And 'tis railed round with iron tall M. P.: And 'tis edg'd round
with iron Fraser (1): 'Tis fenc'd round with irons tall Fraser (2): And
'tis fenc'd round with iron tall Collier. 'tis] its MS. H.
[13-20] om. M. P.
[13] From Aberdeen hither this fellow MS. Letter. hither] here Fraser
(2).
[14] blubber] blabber MS. Letter, Fraser (1), (2), MS. H.
[15] in front] before MS. H.
[17] Counsellor] lawyer so MS. H.
[19] The Devil] Apollyon MS. Letter. scotch] _scotch_ Collier.
[20] trust] hope Collier.] (A humane wish) Note in MS. Letter.
[21] sixth] seventh M. P., Collier: fifth MS. H.
[22] When all is white both high and low MS. Letter, M. P., Fraser (2),
Collier, MS. H.: When the ground All around Is as white as snow Fraser
(1).
[23] As] Or Fraser (1): Like MS. H.
[24] ho! ho!] oho! Fraser (1). it] me M. P.
[25] stone] tall MS. Letter, M. P., Fraser (2), Collier. On the stone to
you MS. H.
[25-6] om. Fraser (1).
[Between 25-6] After sunset and before cockcrow M. P. Before sunrise and
after cockcrow Fraser (2).
[26] void] clear M. P.
[27] I swear by the might Of the darkness of night, I swear by the sleep
of our forefathers' souls Fraser (1). souls] soul MS. H.
[26-8] om. Fraser (2).
[28] Both in shape and size MS. Letter: Both in shape and in size M. P.:
That in shape and size they resembled Fraser (1), Collier: That in shape
and size they are just like the Hole MS. H.
[29] In the large house M. P.
[29-30]
In mansions not seen by the general eye
Of that right ancient family.
Fraser (1).
[31] two] round MS. Letter. places] spaces Collier, MS. H. void] clear
M. P.
[32] Have sat Fraser (1), (2): There have sat for an hour MS. H.
[33] om. MS. Letter, M. P.
[36] Devil] De'il M. P.
[37] With the snow-drift M. P.: With a snow-blast to fan MS. Letter.
[38] Expecting and wishing the trumpet would blow Collier.
THE SNOW-DROP[356:1]
1
Fear no more, thou timid Flower!
Fear thou no more the winter's might,
The whelming thaw, the ponderous shower,
The silence of the freezing night!
Since Laura murmur'd o'er thy leaves 5
The potent sorceries of song,
To thee, meek Flowret! gentler gales
And cloudless skies belong.
2
Her eye with tearful meanings fraught,
She gaz'd till all the body mov'd 10
Interpreting the Spirit's thought--
The Spirit's eager sympathy
Now trembled with thy trembling stem,
And while thou droopedst o'er thy bed,
With sweet unconscious sympathy 15
Inclin'd the drooping head.[357:1]
3
She droop'd her head, she stretch'd her arm,
She whisper'd low her witching rhymes,
Fame unreluctant heard the charm,
And bore thee to Pierian climes! 20
Fear thou no more the Matin Frost
That sparkled on thy bed of snow;
For there, mid laurels ever green,
Immortal thou shalt blow.
4
Thy petals boast a white more soft, 25
The spell hath so perfuméd thee,
That careless Love shall deem thee oft
A blossom from his Myrtle tree.
Then, laughing at the fair deceit,
Shall race with some Etesian wind 30
To seek the woven arboret
Where Laura lies reclin'd.
5
All them whom Love and Fancy grace,
When grosser eyes are clos'd in sleep,
The gentle spirits of the place 35
Waft up the insuperable steep,
On whose vast summit broad and smooth
Her nest the Phœnix Bird conceals,
And where by cypresses o'erhung
The heavenly Lethe steals. 40
6
A sea-like sound the branches breathe,
Stirr'd by the Breeze that loiters there;
And all that stretch their limbs beneath,
Forget the coil of mortal care.
Strange mists along the margins rise, 45
To heal the guests who thither come,
And fit the soul to re-endure
Its earthly martyrdom.
7*
The margin dear to moonlight elves
Where Zephyr-trembling Lilies grow, 50
And bend to kiss their softer selves
That tremble in the stream below:--
There nightly borne does Laura lie
A magic Slumber heaves her breast:
Her arm, white wanderer of the Harp, 55
Beneath her cheek is prest.
8*
The Harp uphung by golden chains
Of that low wind which whispers round,
With coy reproachfulness complains,
In snatches of reluctant sound: 60
The music hovers half-perceiv'd,
And only moulds the slumberer's dreams;
Remember'd LOVES relume her cheek
With Youth's returning gleams.
1800.
FOOTNOTES:
[356:1] First published in _P. W._, 1893. The two last stanzas[*] were
omitted as 'too imperfect to print'. The MS. bears the following
heading: LINES WRITTEN IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE PERUSAL OF MRS. ROBINSON'S
SNOW DROP.
_To the Editor of the Morning Post._
Sir,
I am one of your many readers who have been highly gratified
by some extracts from Mrs. Robinson's 'Walsingham': you will
oblige me by inserting the following lines [_sic_] immediately
on the perusal of her beautiful poem 'The Snow Drop'.--ZAGRI.
The 'Lines' were never sent or never appeared in the _Morning Post_.
To the Snow Drop.
1
Fear thou no more the wintry storm,
Sweet Flowret, blest by LAURA'S song:
She gaz'd upon thy slender form,
The mild Enchantress gaz'd so long;
That trembling as she saw thee droop,
Poor Trembler! o'er thy snowy bed,
With imitation's sympathy
She too inclin'd her head.
2
She droop'd her head, she stretch'd her arm,
She whisper'd low her witching rhymes:
A gentle Sylphid heard the charm,
And bore thee to Pierian climes!
Fear thou no more the sparkling Frost,
The Tempest's Howl, the Fog-damp's gloom:
For thus mid laurels evergreen
Immortal thou shalt bloom!
3 [Stanza 2]
With eager [*feelings*] unreprov'd
With [*steady eye and brooding thought*]
Her eye with tearful meanings fraught,
[*My Fancy saw her gaze at thee*]
She gaz'd till all the body mov'd
[*Till all the moving body caught,*]
Interpreting, the Spirit's sympathy--
The Spirit's eager sympathy
Now trembled with thy trembling stem,
And while thou drooped'st o'er thy bed,
With sweet unconscious sympathy
Inclin'd { her [*portraiture*]
{ the drooping head.
First draft of Stanzas 1-3. _MS. S. T. C._
[357:1] The second stanza of Mrs. Robinson's ('Perdita') 'Ode to the
Snow-drop' runs thus:
All weak and wan, with head inclin'd,
Its parent-breast the drifted snow,
It trembles, while the ruthless wind
Bends its slim form; the tempest lowers,
Its em'rald eye drops crystal show'rs
On its cold bed below.
_The Poetical Works of the late Mrs. Mary Robinson_, 1806, i. 123.
LINENOTES:
[36] insuperable] unvoyageable MS. erased.
[53-4]
Along that marge does Laura lie
Full oft where Slumber heaves her breast
MS. erased.
[64] With Beauty's morning gleams MS. erased.
ON REVISITING THE SEA-SHORE[359:1]
AFTER LONG ABSENCE, UNDER STRONG MEDICAL RECOMMENDATION NOT TO BATHE
God be with thee, gladsome Ocean!
How gladly greet I thee once more!
Ships and waves, and ceaseless motion,
And men rejoicing on thy shore.
Dissuading spake the mild Physician, 5
'Those briny waves for thee are Death!'
But my soul fulfilled her mission,
And lo! I breathe untroubled breath!
Fashion's pining sons and daughters,
That seek the crowd they seem to fly, 10
Trembling they approach thy waters;
And what cares Nature, if they die?
Me a thousand hopes and pleasures
A thousand recollections bland,
Thoughts sublime, and stately measures, 15
Revisit on thy echoing strand:
Dreams (the Soul herself forsaking),
Tearful raptures, boyish mirth;
Silent adorations, making
A blessed shadow of this Earth! 20
O ye hopes, that stir within me,
Health comes with you from above!
God is with me, God is in me!
I cannot die, if Life be Love.
_August_, 1801.
FOOTNOTES:
[359:1] First published in the _Morning Post_ (signed Εστησε), September
15, 1801: included in the _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and
1834. The lines were sent in an unpublished letter to Southey dated
August 15, 1801. An autograph MS. is in the possession of Miss Arnold of
Foxhow.
LINENOTES:
Title] A flowering weed on the sweet Hill of Poesy MS. Letter, 1801: Ode
After Bathing in the Sea, Contrary to Medical Advice M. P. After bathing
in the Sea at Scarborough in company with T. Hutchinson. Aug. 1801 MS.
A.
[3] ceaseless] endless MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
[4] men] life MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
[5]
{ mild MS. A.
Gravely said the { sage Physician MS. Letter:
Mildly said the mild Physician M. P.
[6] To bathe me on thy shores were death MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
[10] That love the city's gilded sty MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
[13] hopes] loves MS. Letter, MS. A.
[16] echoing] sounding MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
[18] Grief-like transports MS. Letter, M. P., MS. A.
ODE TO TRANQUILLITY[360:1]
Tranquillity! thou better name
Than all the family of Fame!
Thou ne'er wilt leave my riper age
To low intrigue, or factious rage;
For oh! dear child of thoughtful Truth, 5
To thee I gave my early youth,
And left the bark, and blest the steadfast shore,
Ere yet the tempest rose and scared me with its roar.
Who late and lingering seeks thy shrine,
On him but seldom, Power divine, 10
Thy spirit rests! Satiety
And Sloth, poor counterfeits of thee,
Mock the tired worldling. Idle Hope
And dire Remembrance interlope,
To vex the feverish slumbers of the mind: 15
The bubble floats before, the spectre stalks behind.
But me thy gentle hand will lead
At morning through the accustomed mead;
And in the sultry summer's heat
Will build me up a mossy seat; 20
And when the gust of Autumn crowds,
And breaks the busy moonlight clouds,
Thou best the thought canst raise, the heart attune,
Light as the busy clouds, calm as the gliding moon.
The feeling heart, the searching soul, 25
To thee I dedicate the whole!
And while within myself I trace
The greatness of some future race,
Aloof with hermit-eye I scan
The present works of present man-- 30
A wild and dream-like trade of blood and guile,
Too foolish for a tear, too wicked for a smile!
1801.
FOOTNOTES:
[360:1] First published in the _Morning Post_ (with two additional
stanzas at the commencement of the poem), December 4, 1801: reprinted in
_The Friend_ (without heading or title), No. 1, Thursday, June 1, 1809:
included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. The stanzas
were not indented in the _Morning Post_ or _The Friend_.
LINENOTES:
Title] _Vix ea nostra voco_ M. P.
[Before 1]
What Statesmen scheme and Soldiers work,
Whether the Pontiff or the Turk,
Will e'er renew th' expiring lease
Of Empire; whether War or Peace
Will best play off the CONSUL'S game;
What fancy-figures, and what name
Half-thinking, sensual France, a natural Slave,
On those ne'er-broken Chains, her self-forg'd Chains, will grave;
Disturb not me! Some tears I shed
When bow'd the Swiss his noble head;
Since then, with quiet heart have view'd
Both distant Fights and Treaties crude,
Whose heap'd up terms, which Fear compels,
(Live Discord's green Combustibles,
And future Fuel of the funeral Pyre)
Now hide, and soon, alas! will feed the low-burnt Fire.
M. P.
[8] tempest] storm-wind M. P.
[15] To] And The Friend, 1809. slumbers] slumber M. P., The Friend.
[17] thy gentle hand] the power Divine M. P.
[21] Autumn] Summer M. P.
[23] The best the thoughts will lift M. P.
[26] thee] her M. P.
[28] some] a M. P.
[29] hermit] hermit's M. P.
TO ASRA[361:1]
Are there two things, of all which men possess,
That are so like each other and so near,
As mutual Love seems like to Happiness?
Dear Asra, woman beyond utterance dear!
This Love which ever welling at my heart, 5
Now in its living fount doth heave and fall,
Now overflowing pours thro' every part
Of all my frame, and fills and changes all,
Like vernal waters springing up through snow,
This Love that seeming great beyond the power 10
Of growth, yet seemeth ever more to grow,
Could I transmute the whole to one rich Dower
Of Happy Life, and give it all to Thee,
Thy lot, methinks, were Heaven, thy age, Eternity!
1801.
FOOTNOTES:
[361:1] First published in 1893. The Sonnet to 'Asra' was prefixed to
the MS. of _Christabel_ which Coleridge presented to Miss Sarah
Hutchinson in 1804.
THE SECOND BIRTH[362:1]
There are two births, the one when Light
First strikes the new-awaken'd sense--
The other when two souls unite,
And we must count our life from then.
When you lov'd me, and I lov'd you, 5
Then both of us were born anew.
? 1801.
FOOTNOTES:
[362:1] First published from a MS. in 1893.
LOVE'S SANCTUARY[362:2]
This yearning heart (Love! witness what I say)
Enshrines thy form as purely as it may,
Round which, as to some spirit uttering bliss,
My thoughts all stand ministrant night and day
Like saintly Priests, that dare not think amiss.
? 1801.
FOOTNOTES:
[362:2] First published from a MS. in 1893.
DEJECTION: AN ODE[362:3]
[WRITTEN APRIL 4, 1802]
Late, late yestreen I saw the new Moon,
With the old Moon in her arms;
And I fear, I fear, my Master dear!
We shall have a deadly storm.
_Ballad of Sir Patrick Spence._
I
Well! If the Bard was weather-wise, who made
The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spence,
This night, so tranquil now, will not go hence
Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade
Than those which mould yon cloud in lazy flakes, 5
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and rakes
Upon the strings of this Æolian lute,
Which better far were mute.
For lo! the New-moon winter-bright!
And overspread with phantom light, 10
(With swimming phantom light o'erspread
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread)
I see the old Moon in her lap, foretelling
The coming-on of rain and squally blast.
And oh! that even now the gust were swelling, 15
And the slant night-shower driving loud and fast!
Those sounds which oft have raised me, whilst they awed,
And sent my soul abroad,
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse give,
Might startle this dull pain, and make it move and live! 20
II
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear--
O Lady! in this wan and heartless mood, 25
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd,
All this long eve, so balmy and serene,
Have I been gazing on the western sky,
And its peculiar tint of yellow green:
And still I gaze--and with how blank an eye! 30
And those thin clouds above, in flakes and bars,
That give away their motion to the stars;
Those stars, that glide behind them or between,
Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always seen:
Yon crescent Moon, as fixed as if it grew 35
In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue;
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
III
My genial spirits fail;
And what can these avail 40
To lift the smothering weight from off my breast?
It were a vain endeavour,
Though I should gaze for ever
On that green light that lingers in the west:
I may not hope from outward forms to win 45
The passion and the Life, whose fountains are within.
IV
O Lady! we receive but what we give,
And in our life alone does Nature live:
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her shroud!
And would we aught behold, of higher worth, 50
Than that inanimate cold world allowed
To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd,
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth
A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud
Enveloping the Earth-- 55
And from the soul itself must there be sent
A sweet and potent voice, of its own birth,
Of all sweet sounds the life and element!
V
O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be! 60
What, and wherein it doth exist,
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist,
This beautiful and beauty-making power.
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was given,
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour, 65
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and shower,
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power,
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower
A new Earth and new Heaven,
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud-- 70
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous cloud--
We in ourselves rejoice!
And thence flows all that charms or ear or sight,
All melodies the echoes of that voice,
All colours a suffusion from that light. 75
VI
There was a time when, though my path was rough,
This joy within me dallied with distress,
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happiness:
For hope grew round me, like the twining vine, 80
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed mine.
But now afflictions bow me down to earth:
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth;
But oh! each visitation
Suspends what nature gave me at my birth, 85
My shaping spirit of Imagination.
For not to think of what I needs must feel,
But to be still and patient, all I can;
And haply by abstruse research to steal
From my own nature all the natural man-- 90
This was my sole resource, my only plan:
Till that which suits a part infects the whole,
And now is almost grown the habit of my soul.
VII
Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my mind,
Reality's dark dream! 95
I turn from you, and listen to the wind,
Which long has raved unnoticed. What a scream
Of agony by torture lengthened out
That lute sent forth! Thou Wind, that rav'st without,
Bare crag, or mountain-tairn,[367:1] or blasted tree, 100
Or pine-grove whither woodman never clomb,
Or lonely house, long held the witches' home,
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee,
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of showers,
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping flowers, 105
Mak'st Devils' yule, with worse than wintry song,
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves among.
Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds!
Thou mighty Poet, e'en to frenzy bold!
What tell'st thou now about? 110
'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout,
With groans, of trampled men, with smarting wounds--
At once they groan with pain, and shudder with the cold!
But hush! there is a pause of deepest silence!
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd, 115
With groans, and tremulous shudderings--all is over--
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep and loud!
A tale, of less affright,
And tempered with delight,
As Otway's self had framed the tender lay,-- 120
'Tis of a little child
Upon a lonesome wild,
Not far from home, but she hath lost her way:
And now moans low in bitter grief and fear,
And now screams loud, and hopes to make her mother hear.
VIII
'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I of sleep: 126
Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep!
Visit her, gentle Sleep! with wings of healing,
And may this storm be but a mountain-birth,
May all the stars hang bright above her dwelling, 130
Silent as though they watched the sleeping Earth!
With light heart may she rise,
Gay fancy, cheerful eyes,
Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice;
To her may all things live, from pole to pole, 135
Their life the eddying of her living soul!
O simple spirit, guided from above,
Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice,
Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice.
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[362:3] First published in the _Morning Post_, October 4, 1802. Included
in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834. The Ode was sent in a
letter to W. Sotheby, dated Keswick, July 19, 1802 (_Letters of S. T.
C._, 1895, i. 379-84). Two other MS. versions are preserved at Coleorton
(_P. W. of W. Wordsworth_, ed. by William Knight, 1896, iii. App., pp.
400, 401). Lines 37, 38 were quoted by Coleridge in the _Historie and
Gests of Maxilian_ (first published in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_
for January, 1822, and reprinted in _Miscellanies, &c._, ed. by T. Ashe,
1885, p. 282): l. 38 by Wordsworth in his pamphlet on _The Convention of
Cintra_, 1809, p. 135: lines 47-75, followed by lines 29-38, were quoted
by Coleridge in _Essays on the Fine Arts_, No. III (which were first
published in _Felix Farley's Bristol Journal_, Sept. 10, 1814, and
reprinted by Cottle, _E. R._, 1837, ii. 201-40); and lines 21-28,
_ibid._, in illustration of the following _Scholium_:--'We have
sufficiently distinguished the beautiful from the agreeable, by the sure
criterion, that when we find an object agreeable, the _sensation_ of
pleasure always precedes the judgment, and is its determining cause. We
_find_ it agreeable. But when we declare an object beautiful, the
contemplation or intuition of its beauty precedes the _feeling_ of
complacency, in order of nature at least: nay in great depression of
spirits may even exist without sensibly producing it.' Lines 76-93 are
quoted in a letter to Southey of July 29, 1802; lines 76-83 are quoted
in a letter to Allsop, September 30, 1819, _Letters, &c._, 1836, i. 17.
Lines 80, 81 are quoted in the _Biographia Literaria_, 1817, ii. 182,
and lines 87-93 in a letter to Josiah Wedgwood, dated October 20, 1802:
see Cottle's _Rem._, 1848, p. 44, and _Tom Wedgwood_ by R. B.
Litchfield, 1903, pp. 114, 115.
[367:1] Tairn is a small lake, generally if not always applied to the
lakes up in the mountains and which are the feeders of those in the
valleys. This address to the Storm-wind [wind _S. L._], will not appear
extravagant to those who have heard it at night and in a mountainous
country.
LINENOTES:
Title] Dejection, &c., written April 4, 1802 M. P.
[2] grand] dear Letter to Sotheby, July 19, 1802.
[5] Than that which moulds yon clouds Letter, July 19, 1802. cloud]
clouds M. P., S. L.
[6] moans] drones Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
[12] by] with Letter, July 19, 1802.
[17-20] om. Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
[21-8] Quoted as illustrative of a 'Scholium' in Felix Farley's Journal,
1814.
[22] stifled] stifling Letter, July 19, 1802.
[23] Which] That Letter, July 19, 1802, F. F.
[Between 24-7]
This, William, well thou knowst
Is the sore evil which I dread the most
And oft'nest suffer. In this heartless mood
To other thoughts by yonder throstle woo'd
That pipes within the larch-tree, not unseen,
The larch, that pushes out in tassels green
Its bundled leafits, woo'd to mild delights
By all the tender sounds and gentle sights
Of this sweet primrose-month and vainly woo'd!
O dearest Poet in this heartless mood.
Letter, July 19, 1802.
[25] O Edmund M. P.: O William Coleorton MS.: O dearest Lady in this
heartless mood F. F.
[26] by yon sweet throstle woo'd F. F.
[28] on] at F. F.
[29] peculiar] celestial F. F. yellow green] yellow-green Letter, July
19, 1802, M. P.
[30] blank] black Cottle, 1837.
[35-6]
Yon crescent moon that seems as if it grew
In its own starless, cloudless
F. F.
[Between 36-7] A boat becalm'd! thy own sweet sky-canoe Letter, July 19,
1802: A boat becalm'd! a lovely sky-canoe M. P.
[38] I _see_ not _feel_ M. P., Letter, July 19, 1802: _I see . . . they
are_ F. F.
[45-6] Quoted in the _Gests of Maxilian_, Jan. 1822, and _Convention of
Cintra_, 1809, p. 135.
[47] Lady] Wordsworth Letter, July 19, 1802: William Coleorton MS.:
Edmund M. P., F. F. we _receive_ but what we _give_ Coleorton MS., F. F.
[48] our] _our_ M. P., F. F.
[51] allowed] _allow'd_ Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
[57] potent] powerful Letter, July 19, 1802, F. F.
V] Stanza v is included in stanza iv in M. P.
[60] What] _What_ Letter, July 19, 1802.
[61] exist] subsist F. F.
[64] virtuous Lady] blameless Poet Letter, July 19, 1802: virtuous
Edmund M. P. Joy, O belovéd, Joy that F. F.
[66] om. Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.: Life of our life the parent and
the birth F. F. effluence] effulgence S. L. Corr. in _Errata_ p. [xii],
and in text by S. T. C. (MS.).
[67] Lady] William Letter, July 19, 1802: Edmund M. P.: om. F. F.
[68] Which] That Letter, July 19, 1802.
[69] A new heaven and new earth F. F.
[71] om. Letter, July 19, 1802: _This_ is the strong voice, this the
luminous cloud F. F.
[72] We, we ourselves Letter,July 19, 1802, M. P.: Our inmost selves F.
F.
[73] flows] comes Letter, July 19, 1802. charms] glads F. F.
[74] the echoes] an echo Letter, July 19, 1802.
[After 75]
Calm steadfast Spirit, guided from above,
O Wordsworth! friend of my devoutest choice,
Great son of genius! full of light and love
Thus, thus dost thou rejoice.
To thee do all things live from pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of thy living soul
Brother and friend of my devoutest choice
Thus may'st thou ever, evermore rejoice!
Letter, July 19, 1802.
[Before 76] Yes, dearest poet, yes Letter, July 19, 1802: Yes, dearest
William! Yes! Coleorton MS. [Stanza v] Yes, dearest Edmund, yes M. P.
[76] The time when Letter, Sept. 30, 1819.
[77] This] The Letters, July 19, 1802, Sept. 30, 1819. I had a heart
that dallied Letter to Southey, July 29, 1802.
[80] For] When Biog. Lit., Letter, Sept. 30, 1819. twining] climbing
Letters, July 19, 29, 1802, Biog. Lit.
[80-1] Quoted in Biog. Lit., 1817, ii. 180.
[81] fruits] fruit Letter, July 19, 1802.
[82] But seared thoughts now Letter, Sept. 30, 1819.
[83] care] car'd Letter, July 19, 1802.
[86] In M. P. the words 'The sixth and seventh stanzas omitted' preceded
three rows of four asterisks, lines 87-93 (quoted in Letter to Josiah
Wedgwood, Oct. 20, 1802) being omitted. The Coleorton MS. ends with line
86.
[87] think] _think_ Letters, July 19, 29, 1802.
[91] was] is Letter, Sept. 30, 1819. only] wisest Letters, July 19, 29,
1802.
[92] Till] And Letters, July 19, 29, 1802.
[93] habit] temper Letters, July 19, 29, Oct. 20, 1802.
[94-5]
Nay [O M. P.] wherefore did I let it haunt my mind
This dark distressful dream.
Letter, July 19, 1802.
[96] you] it Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
[99] That lute sent out! O thou wild storm without Letter, July 19,
1802. O Wind M. P.
[104] who] that Letter, July 19, 1802.
[112] With many groans from men Letter, July 19, 1802: With many groans
of men M. P.
[115] Again! but all that noise Letter, July 19, 1802.
[117] And it has other sounds less fearful and less loud Letter, July
19, 1802.
[120] Otway's self] thou thyself Letter, July 19, 1802: Edmund's self M.
P.
[122] lonesome] heath Letter, July 19, 1802.
[124] bitter] utter Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
[125] hear] _hear_ Letter, July 19, 1802, M. P.
VIII] om. Letter, July 19, 1802.
[126] but] and M. P.
[128] her] him M. P.
[130] her] his M. P.
[131] watched] _watch'd_ M. P.
[132] she] he M. P.
[After 133]
And sing his lofty song and teach me to rejoice!
O Edmund, friend of my devoutest choice,
O rais'd from anxious dread and busy care,
By the immenseness of the good and fair
Which thou see'st everywhere, 5
Joy lifts thy spirit, joy attunes thy voice,
To thee do all things live from pole to pole,
Their life the eddying of thy living soul!
O simple Spirit, guided from above,
O lofty Poet, full of life and love, 10
Brother and Friend of my devoutest choice,
Thus may'st thou ever, evermore rejoice!
ΕΣΤΗΣΕ.
M. P.
[_Note._--For lines 7, 8, 11, 12 of this variant, vide _ante_, variant
of lines 75 foll.]
THE PICTURE[369:1]
OR THE LOVER'S RESOLUTION
Through weeds and thorns, and matted underwood
I force my way; now climb, and now descend
O'er rocks, or bare or mossy, with wild foot
Crushing the purple whorts;[369:2] while oft unseen,
Hurrying along the drifted forest-leaves, 5
The scared snake rustles. Onward still I toil,
I know not, ask not whither! A new joy,
Lovely as light, sudden as summer gust,
And gladsome as the first-born of the spring,
Beckons me on, or follows from behind, 10
Playmate, or guide! The master-passion quelled,
I feel that I am free. With dun-red bark
The fir-trees, and the unfrequent slender oak,
Forth from this tangle wild of bush and brake
Soar up, and form a melancholy vault 15
High o'er me, murmuring like a distant sea.
Here Wisdom might resort, and here Remorse;
Here too the love-lorn man, who, sick in soul,
And of this busy human heart aweary,
Worships the spirit of unconscious life 20
In tree or wild-flower.--Gentle lunatic!
If so he might not wholly cease to be,
He would far rather not be that he is;
But would be something that he knows not of,
In winds or waters, or among the rocks! 25
But hence, fond wretch! breathe not contagion here!
No myrtle-walks are these: these are no groves
Where Love dare loiter! If in sullen mood
He should stray hither, the low stumps shall gore
His dainty feet, the briar and the thorn 30
Make his plumes haggard. Like a wounded bird
Easily caught, ensnare him, O ye Nymphs,
Ye Oreads chaste, ye dusky Dryades!
And you, ye Earth-winds! you that make at morn
The dew-drops quiver on the spiders' webs! 35
You, O ye wingless Airs! that creep between
The rigid stems of heath and bitten furze,
Within whose scanty shade, at summer-noon,
The mother-sheep hath worn a hollow bed--
Ye, that now cool her fleece with dropless damp, 40
Now pant and murmur with her feeding lamb.
Chase, chase him, all ye Fays, and elfin Gnomes!
With prickles sharper than his darts bemock
His little Godship, making him perforce
Creep through a thorn-bush on yon hedgehog's back. 45
This is my hour of triumph! I can now
With my own fancies play the merry fool,
And laugh away worse folly, being free.
Here will I seat myself, beside this old,
Hollow, and weedy oak, which ivy-twine 50
Clothes as with net-work: here will I couch my limbs,
Close by this river, in this silent shade,
As safe and sacred from the step of man
As an invisible world--unheard, unseen,
And listening only to the pebbly brook 55
That murmurs with a dead, yet tinkling sound;
Or to the bees, that in the neighbouring trunk
Make honey-hoards. The breeze, that visits me,
Was never Love's accomplice, never raised
The tendril ringlets from the maiden's brow, 60
And the blue, delicate veins above her cheek;
Ne'er played the wanton--never half disclosed
The maiden's snowy bosom, scattering thence
Eye-poisons for some love-distempered youth,
Who ne'er henceforth may see an aspen-grove 65
Shiver in sunshine, but his feeble heart
Shall flow away like a dissolving thing.
Sweet breeze! thou only, if I guess aright,
Liftest the feathers of the robin's breast,
That swells its little breast, so full of song, 70
Singing above me, on the mountain-ash.
And thou too, desert stream! no pool of thine,
Though clear as lake in latest summer-eve,
Did e'er reflect the stately virgin's robe,
The face, the form divine, the downcast look 75
Contemplative! Behold! her open palm
Presses her cheek and brow! her elbow rests
On the bare branch of half-uprooted tree,
That leans towards its mirror! Who erewhile
Had from her countenance turned, or looked by stealth,
(For Fear is true-love's cruel nurse), he now 81
With steadfast gaze and unoffending eye,
Worships the watery idol, dreaming hopes
Delicious to the soul, but fleeting, vain,
E'en as that phantom-world on which he gazed, 85
But not unheeded gazed: for see, ah! see,
The sportive tyrant with her left hand plucks
The heads of tall flowers that behind her grow,
Lychnis, and willow-herb, and fox-glove bells:
And suddenly, as one that toys with time, 90
Scatters them on the pool! Then all the charm
Is broken--all that phantom world so fair
Vanishes, and a thousand circlets spread,
And each mis-shape the other. Stay awhile,
Poor youth, who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes! 95
The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon
The visions will return! And lo! he stays:
And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms
Come trembling back, unite, and now once more
The pool becomes a mirror; and behold 100
Each wildflower on the marge inverted there,
And there the half-uprooted tree--but where,
O where the virgin's snowy arm, that leaned
On its bare branch? He turns, and she is gone!
Homeward she steals through many a woodland maze 105
Which he shall seek in vain. Ill-fated youth!
Go, day by day, and waste thy manly prime
In mad love-yearning by the vacant brook,
Till sickly thoughts bewitch thine eyes, and thou
Behold'st her shadow still abiding there, 110
The Naiad of the mirror!
Not to thee,
O wild and desert stream! belongs this tale:
Gloomy and dark art thou--the crowded firs
Spire from thy shores, and stretch across thy bed,
Making thee doleful as a cavern-well: 115
Save when the shy king-fishers build their nest
On thy steep banks, no loves hast thou, wild stream!
This be my chosen haunt--emancipate
From Passion's dreams, a freeman, and alone,
I rise and trace its devious course. O lead, 120
Lead me to deeper shades and lonelier glooms.
Lo! stealing through the canopy of firs,
How fair the sunshine spots that mossy rock,
Isle of the river, whose disparted waves
Dart off asunder with an angry sound, 125
How soon to re-unite! And see! they meet,
Each in the other lost and found: and see
Placeless, as spirits, one soft water-sun
Throbbing within them, heart at once and eye!
With its soft neighbourhood of filmy clouds, 130
The stains and shadings of forgotten tears,
Dimness o'erswum with lustre! Such the hour
Of deep enjoyment, following love's brief feuds;
And hark, the noise of a near waterfall!
I pass forth into light--I find myself 135
Beneath a weeping birch (most beautiful
Of forest trees, the Lady of the Woods),
Hard by the brink of a tall weedy rock
That overbrows the cataract. How bursts
The landscape on my sight! Two crescent hills 140
Fold in behind each other, and so make
A circular vale, and land-locked, as might seem,
With brook and bridge, and grey stone cottages,
Half hid by rocks and fruit-trees. At my feet,
The whortle-berries are bedewed with spray, 145
Dashed upwards by the furious waterfall.
How solemnly the pendent ivy-mass
Swings in its winnow: All the air is calm.
The smoke from cottage-chimneys, tinged with light,
Rises in columns; from this house alone, 150
Close by the water-fall, the column slants,
And feels its ceaseless breeze. But what is this?
That cottage, with its slanting chimney-smoke,
And close beside its porch a sleeping child,
His dear head pillowed on a sleeping dog-- 155
One arm between its fore-legs, and the hand
Holds loosely its small handful of wild-flowers,
Unfilletted, and of unequal lengths.
A curious picture, with a master's haste
Sketched on a strip of pinky-silver skin, 160
Peeled from the birchen bark! Divinest maid!
Yon bark her canvas, and those purple berries
Her pencil! See, the juice is scarcely dried
On the fine skin! She has been newly here;
And lo! yon patch of heath has been her couch-- 165
The pressure still remains! O blesséd couch!
For this may'st thou flower early, and the sun,
Slanting at eve, rest bright, and linger long
Upon thy purple bells! O Isabel!
Daughter of genius! stateliest of our maids! 170
More beautiful than whom Alcaeus wooed,
The Lesbian woman of immortal song!
O child of genius! stately, beautiful,
And full of love to all, save only me,
And not ungentle e'en to me! My heart, 175
Why beats it thus? Through yonder coppice-wood
Needs must the pathway turn, that leads straightway
On to her father's house. She is alone!
The night draws on--such ways are hard to hit--
And fit it is I should restore this sketch, 180
Dropt unawares, no doubt. Why should I yearn
To keep the relique? 'twill but idly feed
The passion that consumes me. Let me haste!
The picture in my hand which she has left;
She cannot blame me that I followed her: 185
And I may be her guide the long wood through.
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[369:1] First published in the _Morning Post_, September 6, 1802:
included in the _Poetical Register_ for 1802 (1804), in _Sibylline
Leaves_, 1817, 1828, 1829, and 1834.
It has been pointed out to me (by Mr. Arthur Turnbull) that the
conception of the 'Resolution' that failed was suggested by Gessner's
Idyll _Der feste Vorsatz_ ('The Fixed Resolution'):--_S. Gessner's
Schriften_, i. 104-7; _Works_, 1802, ii. 219-21.
[369:2] _Vaccinium Myrtillus_, known by the different names of Whorts,
Whortle-berries, Bilberries; and in the North of England, Blea-berries
and Bloom-berries. [_Note by S. T. C._ 1802.]
LINENOTES:
[3] wild] blind M. P., P. R.
[17-26] om. M. P., P. R.
[17-25] Quoted in Letter to Cottle, May 27, 1814.
[18] love-lorn] woe-worn (heart-sick _erased_) Letter, 1814.
[20] _unconscious life_ Letter, 1814.
[22] _wholly cease_ to BE Letter, 1814.
[27] these] here M. P.
[28] For Love to dwell in; the low stumps would gore M. P., P. R.
[31-3]
till, like wounded bird
Easily caught, the dusky Dryades
With prickles sharper than his darts would mock.
_His little Godship_
M. P., P. R.
[34-42, 44] om. M.P., P.R.
[51] here will couch M. P., P. R., S. L.
[55] brook] stream M. P., P. R., S. L. (for _stream_ read _brook_
_Errata_, S. L., p. [xi]).
[56-7]
yet bell-like sound
Tinkling, or bees
M. P., P. R., S. L. 1828.
[58] The] This M. P., P. R., S. L.
[70] That swells its] Who swells his M. P., P. R., S. L.
[75] the] her downcast M. P., P. R. Her face, her form divine, her
downcast look S. L.
[76-7]
Contemplative, her cheek upon her palm
Supported; the white arm and elbow rest
M. P., P. R.
Contemplative! Ah see! her open palm
Presses
S. L.
[79-80]
He, meanwhile,
Who from
M. P., P. R., S. L.
[86] om. M. P., P. R., S. L.
[87] The] She M. P., P. R., S. L.
[91-100] These lines are quoted in the prefatory note to _Kubla Khan_.
[94] mis-shape] mis-shapes M. P.
[108] love-yearning by] love-gazing on M. P., P. R.
[114] Spire] Tow'r M. P., P. R., S. L.
[118] my] thy S. L. (for _thy_ read _my_ _Errata_, S. L., p. [xi]).
[121] and] to M. P., P. R.
[124] waves] waters P. R., S. L.
[126-32]
_How soon to re-unite!_ They meet, they join
In deep embrace, and open to the sun
Lie calm and smooth. Such the delicious hour
M. P., P. R., S. L.
[133] Of deep enjoyment, foll'wing Love's brief quarrels M. P., P. R.
Lines 126-33 are supplied in the _Errata_, S. L. 1817 (p. xi).
[134] And] But _Errata_, S. L. (p. xi).
[135] I come out into light M. P., P. R.: I came out into light S. L.
For _came_ read _come_ _Errata_, S. L. (p. xi).
[144] At] Beneath M. P., P. R., S. L. (for _Beneath_ read _At_ _Errata_,
S. L., p. [xi]).
[152] this] _this_ M. P., P. R.: THIS S. L. 1828, 1829.
[162] those] these P. R.
[174] me] one M. P., P. R.
[177] straightway] away M. P., P. R.
[184] The] This M. P., P. R.
TO MATILDA BETHAM FROM A STRANGER[374:1]
['One of our most celebrated poets, who had, I was told, picked out and
praised the little piece 'On a Cloud,' another had quoted (saying it
would have been faultless if I had not used the word _Phoebus_ in it,
which he thought inadmissible in modern poetry), sent me some verses
inscribed "To Matilda Betham, from a Stranger"; and dated "Keswick,
Sept. 9, 1802, S. T. C." I should have guessed whence they came, but
dared not flatter myself so highly as satisfactorily to believe it,
before I obtained the avowal of the lady who had transmitted them.
_Excerpt from 'Autobiographical Sketch'._]
Matilda! I have heard a sweet tune played
On a sweet instrument--thy Poesie--
Sent to my soul by Boughton's pleading voice,
Where friendship's zealous wish inspirited,
Deepened and filled the subtle tones of _taste_: 5
(So have I heard a Nightingale's fine notes
Blend with the murmur of a hidden stream!)
And now the fair, wild offspring of thy genius,
Those wanderers whom thy fancy had sent forth
To seek their fortune in this motley world, 10
Have found a little home within _my_ heart,
And brought me, as the quit-rent of their lodging,
Rose-buds, and fruit-blossoms, and pretty weeds,
And timorous laurel leaflets half-disclosed,
Engarlanded with gadding woodbine tendrils! 15
A coronal, which, with undoubting hand,
I twine around the brows of patriot HOPE!
The Almighty, having first composed a Man,
Set him to music, framing Woman for him,
And fitted each to each, and made them one! 20
And 'tis my faith, that there's a natural bond
Between the female mind and measured sounds,
Nor do I know a sweeter Hope than this,
That this sweet Hope, by judgment unreproved,
That our own Britain, our dear mother Isle, 25
May boast one Maid, a poetess _indeed_,
Great as th' impassioned Lesbian, in sweet song,
And O! of holier mind, and happier fate.
Matilda! I dare twine _thy_ vernal wreath
Around the brows of patriot Hope! But thou 30
Be wise! be bold! fulfil my auspices!
Tho' sweet thy measures, stern must be thy thought,
Patient thy study, watchful thy mild eye!
Poetic feelings, like the stretching boughs
Of mighty oaks, pay homage to the gales, 35
Toss in the strong winds, drive before the gust,
Themselves one giddy storm of fluttering leaves;
Yet, all the while self-limited, remain
Equally near the fixed and solid trunk
Of Truth and Nature in the howling storm, 40
As in the calm that stills the aspen grove.
Be bold, meek Woman! but be wisely bold!
Fly, ostrich-like, firm land beneath thy feet,
Yet hurried onward by thy wings of fancy
Swift as the whirlwind, singing in their quills. 45
Look round thee! look within thee! think and feel!
What nobler meed, Matilda! canst thou win,
Than tears of gladness in a BOUGHTON'S[376:1] eyes,
And exultation even in strangers' hearts?
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[374:1] First printed in a 'privately printed autobiographical sketch of
Miss Matilda Betham', preserved in a volume of tracts arranged and bound
up by Southey, now in the Forster Collection in the Victoria and Albert
Museum: reprinted (by J. Dykes Campbell) in the _Athenaeum_ (March 15,
1890): and, again, in _A House of Letters_, by Ernest Betham [1905], pp.
76-7. First collected in 1893 (see Editor's _Note_, p. 630). Lines 33-41
are quoted in a Letter to Sotheby, September 10, 1802. See _Letters of
S. T. C._, 1895, i. 404.
[376:1] Catherine Rose, wife of Sir Charles William Rouse-Boughton,
Bart. Sir Charles and Lady Boughton visited Greta Hall in September,
1802.
LINENOTES:
[7] murmur] murmurs 1893.
[16] coronal] coronel P. Sketch.
[34] stretching] flexuous MS. Letter, Sept. 10, 1802.
[35] pay] yield MS. Letter, 1802.
[39] solid] parent MS. Letter, 1802.
[40] Of truth in Nature--in the howling blast MS. Letter, 1802.
HYMN BEFORE SUN-RISE, IN THE VALE OF CHAMOUNI[376:2]
Besides the Rivers, Arve and Arveiron, which have their sources in the
foot of Mont Blanc, five conspicuous torrents rush down its sides; and
within a few paces of the Glaciers, the Gentiana Major grows in immense
numbers, with its 'flowers of loveliest [liveliest _Friend, 1809_]
blue.'
Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star
In his steep course? So long he seems to pause
On thy bald awful head, O sovran BLANC,
The Arve and Arveiron at thy base
Rave ceaselessly; but thou, most awful Form! 5
Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines,
How silently! Around thee and above
Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black,
An ebon mass: methinks thou piercest it,
As with a wedge! But when I look again, 10
It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine,
Thy habitation from eternity!
O dread and silent Mount! I gazed upon thee,
Till thou, still present to the bodily sense,
Didst vanish from my thought: entranced in prayer 15
I worshipped the Invisible alone.
Yet, like some sweet beguiling melody,
So sweet, we know not we are listening to it,
Thou, the meanwhile, wast blending with my Thought,
Yea, with my Life and Life's own secret joy: 20
Till the dilating Soul, enrapt, transfused,
Into the mighty vision passing--there
As in her natural form, swelled vast to Heaven!
Awake, my soul! not only passive praise
Thou owest! not alone these swelling tears, 25
Mute thanks and secret ecstasy! Awake,
Voice of sweet song! Awake, my heart, awake!
Green vales and icy cliffs, all join my Hymn.
Thou first and chief, sole sovereign of the Vale!
O struggling with the darkness all the night,[378:1] 30
And visited all night by troops of stars,
Or when they climb the sky or when they sink:
Companion of the morning-star at dawn,
Thyself Earth's rosy star, and of the dawn
Co-herald: wake, O wake, and utter praise! 35
Who sank thy sunless pillars deep in Earth?
Who filled thy countenance with rosy light?
Who made thee parent of perpetual streams?
And you, ye five wild torrents fiercely glad!
Who called you forth from night and utter death, 40
From dark and icy caverns called you forth,
Down those precipitous, black, jagged rocks,
For ever shattered and the same for ever?
Who gave you your invulnerable life,
Your strength, your speed, your fury, and your joy, 45
Unceasing thunder and eternal foam?
And who commanded (and the silence came),
Here let the billows stiffen, and have rest?
Ye Ice-falls! ye that from the mountain's brow
Adown enormous ravines slope amain-- 50
Torrents, methinks, that heard a mighty voice,
And stopped at once amid their maddest plunge!
Motionless torrents! silent cataracts!
Who made you glorious as the Gates of Heaven
Beneath the keen full moon? Who bade the sun 55
Clothe you with rainbows? Who, with living flowers[379:1]
Of loveliest blue, spread garlands at your feet?--
GOD! let the torrents, like a shout of nations,
Answer! and let the ice-plains echo, GOD!
GOD! sing ye meadow-streams with gladsome voice! 60
Ye pine-groves, with your soft and soul-like sounds!
And they too have a voice, yon piles of snow,
And in their perilous fall shall thunder, GOD!
Ye living flowers that skirt the eternal frost!
Ye wild goats sporting round the eagle's nest! 65
Ye eagles, play-mates of the mountain-storm!
Ye lightnings, the dread arrows of the clouds!
Ye signs and wonders of the element!
Utter forth God, and fill the hills with praise!
Thou too, hoar Mount! with thy sky-pointing peaks,
Oft from whose feet the avalanche,[380:1] unheard, 71
Shoots downward, glittering through the pure serene
Into the depth of clouds, that veil thy breast--
Thou too again, stupendous Mountain! thou
That as I raise my head, awhile bowed low 75
In adoration, upward from thy base
Slow travelling with dim eyes suffused with tears,
Solemnly seemest, like a vapoury cloud,
To rise before me--Rise, O ever rise,
Rise like a cloud of incense from the Earth! 80
Thou kingly Spirit throned among the hills,
Thou dread ambassador from Earth to Heaven,
Great Hierarch! tell thou the silent sky,
And tell the stars, and tell yon rising sun
Earth, with her thousand voices, praises GOD. 85
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[376:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, Sept. 11, 1802: reprinted
in the _Poetical Register_ for 1802 (1803), ii. 308, 311, and in _The
Friend_, No. XI, Oct. 26, 1809: included in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1817,
1828, 1829, and 1834. Three MSS. are extant: (1) _MS. A_, sent to Sir
George Beaumont, Oct. 1803 (see _Coleorton Letters_, 1886, i. 26); (2)
_MS. B_, the MS. of the version as printed in _The Friend_, Oct. 26,
1809 (now in the Forster Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum);
(3) _MS. C_, presented to Mrs. Brabant in 1815 (now in the British
Museum). The _Hymn before Sunrise, &c._, 'Hymn in the manner of the
Psalms,' is an expansion, in part, of a translation of Friederika Brun's
'Ode to Chamouny', addressed to Klopstock, which numbers some twenty
lines. The German original (see the Appendices of this edition) was
first appended to Coleridge's _Poetical Works_ in 1844 (p. 372). A
translation was given in a footnote, _P. W._ (ed. by T. Ashe), 1885, ii.
86, 87. In the _Morning Post_ and _Poetical Register_ the following
explanatory note preceded the poem:--
'CHAMOUNI, THE HOUR BEFORE SUNRISE.
'[Chamouni is one of the highest mountain valleys of the
Barony of Faucigny in the Savoy Alps; and exhibits a kind of
fairy world, in which the wildest appearances (I had almost
said horrors) of Nature alternate with the softest and most
beautiful. The chain of Mont Blanc is its boundary; and
besides the Arve it is filled with sounds from the Arveiron,
which rushes from the melted glaciers, like a giant, mad with
joy, from a dungeon, and forms other torrents of snow-water,
having their rise in the glaciers which slope down into the
valley. The beautiful _Gentiana major_, or greater gentian,
with blossoms of the brightest blue, grows in large companies
a few steps from the never-melted ice of the glaciers. I
thought it an affecting emblem of the boldness of human hope,
venturing near, and, as it were, leaning over the brink of the
grave. Indeed, the whole vale, its every light, its every
sound, must needs impress every mind not utterly callous with
the thought--Who _would_ be, who _could_ be an Atheist in this
valley of wonders! If any of the readers of the MORNING POST
[Those who have _P. R._] have visited this vale in their
journeys among the Alps, I am confident that they [that they
_om. P. R._] will not find the sentiments and feelings
expressed, or attempted to be expressed, in the following
poem, extravagant.]'
[378:1] I had written a much finer line when Sca' Fell was in my
thoughts, viz.:--
O blacker than the darkness all the night
And visited
_Note to MS. A._
[379:1] The _Gentiana major_ grows in large companies a stride's
distance from the foot of several of the glaciers. Its _blue_ flower,
the colour of Hope: is it not a pretty emblem of Hope creeping onward
even to the edge of the grave, to the very verge of utter desolation?
_Note to MS. A._
[380:1] The fall of vast masses of snow, so called. _Note MS. (C)._
LINENOTES:
Title] Chamouny The Hour before Sunrise A Hymn M. P., P. R.: Mount
Blanc, The Summit of the Vale of Chamouny, An Hour before Sunrise: A
Hymn MS. A.
[3] On thy bald awful head O Chamouny M. P., P. R.: On thy bald awful
top O Chamouny MS. A: On thy bald awful top O Sovran Blanc Friend, 1809.
[4] Arve] Arvè M. P., P. R., MS. (C).
[5] dread mountain form M. P., P. R., MS. A. most] dread Friend, 1809.
[6] forth] out MS. A.
[8] Deep is the sky, and black: transpicuous, deep M. P., P. R.: Deep is
the sky, and black! transpicuous, black. MS. A.
[11] is thine] seems thy M. P., P. R.
[13] Mount] form M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[14] the bodily sense] my bodily eye M. P., P. R.: my bodily sense MS.
A.
[16] Invisible] INVISIBLE M. P., P. R., Friend, 1809, MS. A.
[17]
Yet thou meantime, wast working on my soul,
E'en like some deep enchanting melody
M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[19 foll.]
But [Now MS. A] I awake, and with a busier mind,
And active will self-conscious, offer now
Not as before, involuntary pray'r
And passive adoration!
Hand and voice,
Awake, awake! and thou, my heart, awake!
Awake ye rocks! Ye forest pines awake! (Not in MS. A.)
Green fields
M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[29-30]
And thou, O silent Mountain, sole and bare
O blacker than the darkness all the night
M. P., P. R.
[29] And thou, thou silent mountain, lone and bare MS. A. The first and
chief, stern Monarch of the Vale _Errata to 'Hymn', &c._, The Friend,
No. XIII, Nov. 16, 1809.
[38] parent] father M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[41] From darkness let you loose and icy dens M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[46] Eternal thunder and unceasing foam MS. A.
[48] 'Here shall the billows . . .' M. P., P. R.: Here shall your
billows MS. A.
[49] the mountain's brow] yon dizzy heights M. P., P. R.
[50] Adown enormous ravines steeply slope M. P., P. R., MS. A. [A _bad_
line; but I hope to be able to alter it Note to MS. A].
[56]
with lovely flowers
Of living blue
M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[Between 58-64]
GOD! GOD! the torrents like a shout of nations
Utter! the ice-plain bursts and answers GOD!
GOD, sing the meadow-streams with gladsome voice,
And pine-groves with their soft and soul-like sound,
The silent snow-mass, loos'ning thunders God!
M. P., P. R.
These lines were omitted in MS. A.
[64] Ye dreadless flow'rs that fringe M. P., P. R. living] azure MS. A.
livery S. L. (corrected in _Errata_, p. [xi]).
[65] sporting round] bounding by M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[66] mountain-storm] mountain blast M. P., P. R.
[69] God] GOD. M. P., P. R.
[Between 70-80]
And thou, O silent Form, alone and bare
Whom, as I lift again my head bow'd low
In adoration, I again behold,
And to thy summit upward from thy base
Sweep slowly with dim eyes suffus'd by tears,
Awake thou mountain form! rise, like a cloud
M. P., P. R.
And thou thou silent mountain, lone and bare
Whom as I lift again my head bow'd low
In adoration, I again behold!
And from thy summit upward to the base
Sweep slowly, with dim eyes suffus'd with tears
Rise, mighty form! even as thou _seem'st_ to rise.
MS. A.
[70] Thou too] And thou, Errata, Friend, No. XIII. Once more, hoar Mount
MS. (C), S. L. (For _once more_, read _Thou too_ _Errata_, S. L., p.
[xi]).
[72] through] in Friend, 1809. In the blue serene MS. (C).
[74] again] once more MS. (C).
[75] That as once more I raise my Head bow'd low Friend, No. XI, 1809
(see the _Errata_, No. XIII).
[83-4] Tell the blue sky MS. A.
[84] yon] the M. P., P. R., MS. A.
[85] praises] calls on M. P., P. R., MS. A.
THE GOOD, GREAT MAN[381:1]
'How seldom, friend! a good great man inherits
Honour or wealth with all his worth and pains!
It sounds like stories from the land of spirits
If any man obtain that which he merits
Or any merit that which he obtains.' 5
REPLY TO THE ABOVE
For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain!
What would'st thou have a good great man obtain?
Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain?
Or throne of corses which his sword had slain? 10
Greatness and goodness are not _means_, but _ends_!
Hath he not always treasures, always friends,
The good great man? _three_ treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT,
And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath:
And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, 15
HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[381:1] First published in the _Morning Post_ (as an 'Epigram', signed
ΕΣΤΗΣΕ), September 23, 1802: reprinted in the _Poetical Register_ for
1802 (1803, p. 246): included in _The Friend_, No. XIX, December 28,
1809, and in _Literary Remains_, 1836, i. 53. First collected in 1844.
LINENOTES:
Title] Epigram M. P.: Epigrams P. R.: Complaint Lit. Rem., 1844, 1852:
The Good, &c. 1893.
[6] Reply to the above M. P.: Reply The Friend, 1809: Reproof Lit. Rem.,
1844.
INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN ON A HEATH[381:2]
This Sycamore, oft musical with bees,--
Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed
May all its agéd boughs o'er-canopy
The small round basin, which this jutting stone
Keeps pure from falling leaves! Long may the Spring, 5
Quietly as a sleeping infant's breath,
Send up cold waters to the traveller
With soft and even pulse! Nor ever cease
Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance,[382:1]
Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's Page, 10
As merry and no taller, dances still,
Nor wrinkles the smooth surface of the Fount.
Here Twilight is and Coolness: here is moss,
A soft seat, and a deep and ample shade.
Thou may'st toil far and find no second tree. 15
Drink, Pilgrim, here; Here rest! and if thy heart
Be innocent, here too shalt thou refresh
Thy spirit, listening to some gentle sound,
Or passing gale or hum of murmuring bees!
1802.
FOOTNOTES:
[381:2] First published in the _Morning Post_, September 24, 1802:
reprinted in the _Poetical Register_ for 1802 (1803, p. 338): included
in _Sibylline Leaves_, 1828, 1829, and 1834.
[382:1] Compare _Anima Poetae_, 1895, p. 17: 'The spring with the little
tiny cone of loose sand ever rising and sinking to the bottom, but its
surface without a wrinkle.'
LINENOTES:
Title] Inscription on a Jutting Stone, over a Spring M. P., P. R.
[3] agéd] darksome M. P., P. R.
[5] Still may this spring M. P., P. R.
[7] waters] water P. R. to] for M. P., P. R.
[9] soundless] noiseless M. P., P. R.
[10] Which] That M. P., P. R.
[13] Here coolness dwell, and twilight M. P., P. R.
[16 foll.]
Here, stranger, drink! Here rest! And if thy heart
Be innocent, here too may'st thou renew
Thy spirits, listening to these gentle sounds,
The passing gale, or ever-murm'ring bees.
M. P., P. R.
AN ODE TO THE RAIN[382:2]
COMPOSED BEFORE DAYLIGHT, ON THE MORNING APPOINTED FOR THE DEPARTURE OF
A VERY WORTHY, BUT NOT VERY PLEASANT VISITOR, WHOM IT WAS FEARED THE
RAIN MIGHT DETAIN
I
I know it is dark; and though I have lain,
Awake, as I guess, an hour or twain,
I have not once opened the lids of my eyes,
But I lie in the dark, as a blind man lies.
O Rain! that I lie listening to, 5
You're but a doleful sound at best:
I owe you little thanks, 'tis true,
For breaking thus my needful rest!
Yet if, as soon as it is light,
O Rain! you will but take your flight, 10
I'll neither rail, nor malice keep,
Though sick and sore for want of sleep.
But only now, for this one day,
Do go, dear Rain! do go away!
II
O Rain! with your dull two-fold sound, 15
The clash hard by, and the murmur all round!
You know, if you know aught, that we,
Both night and day, but ill agree:
For days and months, and almost years,
Have limped on through this vale of tears, 20
Since body of mine, and rainy weather,
Have lived on easy terms together.
Yet if, as soon as it is light,
O Rain! you will but take your flight,
Though you should come again to-morrow, 25
And bring with you both pain and sorrow;
Though stomach should sicken and knees should swell--
I'll nothing speak of you but well.
But only now for this one day,
Do go, dear Rain! do go away! 30
III
Dear Rain! I ne'er refused to say
You're a good creature in your way;
Nay, I could write a book myself,
Would fit a parson's lower shelf,
Showing how very good you are.-- 35
What then? sometimes it must be fair
And if sometimes, why not to-day?
Do go, dear Rain! do go away!
IV
Dear Rain! if I've been cold and shy,
Take no offence! I'll tell you why. 40
A dear old Friend e'en now is here,
And with him came my sister dear;
After long absence now first met,
Long months by pain and grief beset--
We three dear friends! in truth, we groan 45
Impatiently to be alone.
We three, you mark! and not one more!
The strong wish makes my spirit sore.
We have so much to talk about,
So many sad things to let out; 50
So many tears in our eye-corners,
Sitting like little Jacky Horners--
In short, as soon as it is day,
Do go, dear Rain! do go away.
V
And this I'll swear to you, dear Rain! 55
Whenever you shall come again,
Be you as dull as e'er you could
(And by the bye 'tis understood,
You're not so pleasant as you're good),
Yet, knowing well your worth and place, 60
I'll welcome you with cheerful face;
And though you stayed a week or more,
Were ten times duller than before;
Yet with kind heart, and right good will,
I'll sit and listen to you still; 65
Nor should you go away, dear Rain!
Uninvited to remain.
But only now, for this one day,
Do go, dear Rain! do go away.