16

'Twas not a mist, nor was it quite a cloud,
But it pass'd smoothly on towards the sea—
Smoothly and lightly between Earth and Heaven:
So, thin a cloud,
It scarce bedimm'd the star that shone behind it:
And Hesper now
Paus'd on the welkin blue, and cloudless brink,
A golden circlet! while the Star of Jove—
That other lovely star—high o'er my head
Shone whitely in the centre of his Haze
. . . one black-blue cloud
Stretch'd, like the heaven, o'er all the cope of Heaven.

Dec. 1797. First published from an MS. in 1893.

17

[NOT A CRITIC—BUT A JUDGE]

Whom should I choose for my Judge? the earnest, impersonal reader,
Who, in the work, forgets me and the world and himself!
You who have eyes to detect, and Gall to Chastise the imperfect,
Have you the heart, too, that loves,—feels and rewards the Compleat?

1805. Now first published from an MS.

18

A sumptuous and magnificent Revenge.

March 1806. First published from an MS. in 1893.

19

[DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI]

Come, come thou bleak December wind,
And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
Flash, like a love-thought, thro' me, Death!
And take a life that wearies me.

Leghorn, June 7, 1806. First published in Letters of S. T. C., 1875, ii. 499, n. 1. Now collected for the first time. Adapted from Percy's version of 'Waly, Waly, Love be bonny', st. 3.

Marti'mas wind when wilt thou blaw,
And shake the green leaves aff the tree?
O gentle death, when wilt thou cum?
For of my life I am wearie.

20

As some vast Tropic tree, itself a wood,
That crests its head with clouds, beneath the flood
Feeds its deep roots, and with the bulging flank
Of its wide base controls the fronting bank—
(By the slant current's pressure scoop'd away
The fronting bank becomes a foam-piled bay)
High in the Fork the uncouth Idol knits
His channel'd brow; low murmurs stir by fits
And dark below the horrid Faquir sits—
An Horror from its broad Head's branching wreath
Broods o'er the rude Idolatry beneath—

1806-7. Now first published from an MS.

21

Let Eagle bid the Tortoise sunward soar—
As vainly Strength speaks to a broken Mind.[1001:1]

1807. First published in Thomas Poole and His Friends, 1888, ii. 195.

22

The body,
Eternal Shadow of the finite Soul,
The Soul's self-symbol, its image of itself.
Its own yet not itself.

Now first published from an MS.

23

Or Wren or Linnet,
In Bush and Bushet;
No tree, but in it
A cooing Cushat.

May 1807. Now first published from an MS.

24

The reed roof'd village still bepatch'd with snow
Smok'd in the sun-thaw.

1798. Now first published from an MS. Compare Frost at Midnight, ll. 69-70, ante, p. 242.

25

And in Life's noisiest hour
There whispers still the ceaseless love of thee,
The heart's self-solace
commune

and soliloquy.

1807. Now first published from an MS.

26

You mould my Hopes you fashion me within:
And to the leading love-throb in the heart,
Through all my being, through my pulses beat;
You lie in all my many thoughts like Light,
Like the fair light of Dawn, or summer Eve,
On rippling stream, or cloud-reflecting lake;
And looking to the Heaven that bends above you,
How oft! I bless the lot that made me love you.

1807. Now first published from an MS.

27

And my heart mantles in its own delight.

Now first published from an MS.

28

The spruce and limber yellow-hammer
In the dawn of spring and sultry summer,
In hedge or tree the hours beguiling
With notes as of one who brass is filing.

1807. Now first published from an MS.

29

FRAGMENT OF AN ODE ON NAPOLEON

O'erhung with yew, midway the Muses mount
From thy sweet murmurs far, O Hippocrene!
Turbid and black upboils an angry fount
Tossing its shatter'd foam in vengeful spleen—
Phlegethon's rage Cocytus' wailings hoarse
Alternate now, now mixt, made known its headlong course:
Thither with terror stricken and surprise,
(For sure such haunts were ne'er to Muse's choice)
Euterpe led me. Mute with asking eyes
I stood expectant of her heavenly voice.
Her voice entranc'd my terror and made flow
In a rude understrain the maniac fount below.
'Whene'er (the Goddess said) abhorr'd of Jove
Usurping Power his hands in blood imbrues—

? 1808. Now first published from an MS.

30

The singing Kettle and the purring Cat,
The gentle breathing of the cradled Babe,
The silence of the Mother's love-bright eye,
And tender smile answering its smile of Sleep.

1803. First published from an MS. in 1893.

31

Two wedded hearts, if ere were such,
Imprison'd in adjoining cells,
Across whose thin partition-wall
The builder left one narrow rent,
And where, most content in discontent,
A joy with itself at strife—
Die into an intenser life.

1808. First published from an MS. in 1893.

Another Version

The builder left one narrow rent,
Two wedded hearts, if ere were such,
Contented most in discontent,
Still there cling, and try in vain to touch!
[[1004]] O Joy! with thy own joy at strife,
That yearning for the Realm above
Wouldst die into intenser Life,
And Union absolute of Love!

1808. First published from an MS. in 1893.

32

Sole Maid, associate sole, to me beyond
Compare all living creatures dear—
Thoughts, which have found their harbour in thy heart
Dearest! me thought of him to thee so dear!

1809. First published from an MS. in 1893.

33

EPIGRAM ON KEPLER

FROM THE GERMAN

No mortal spirit yet had clomb so high
As Kepler—yet his Country saw him die
For very want! the Minds alone he fed,
And so the Bodies left him without bread.

1799. First published in The Friend, Nov. 30, 1809 (1818, ii. 95; 1850, ii. 69). First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 374.

LINENOTES:

[1]

spirit] Genius MS.

[2]

yet] and MS.

[3]

Minds] Souls MS. erased.

34

When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt:
A flight of Hope for ever on the wing
But made Tranquillity a conscious thing;
And wheeling round and round in sportive coil,
Fann'd the calm air upon the brow of Toil.

1810. First published from an MS. in 1893.

35

I have experienced
The worst the world can wreak on me—the worst
That can make Life indifferent, yet disturb
With whisper'd discontent the dying prayer—
I have beheld the whole of all, wherein
My heart had any interest in this life
To be disrent and torn from off my Hopes
[[1005]] That nothing now is left. Why then live on?
That hostage that the world had in its keeping
Given by me as a pledge that I would live—
That hope of Her, say rather that pure Faith
In her fix'd Love, which held me to keep truce
With the tyranny of Life—is gone, ah! whither?
What boots it to reply? 'tis gone! and now
Well may I break this Pact, this league of Blood
That ties me to myself—and break I shall.

1810. First published from an MS. in 1893.

36

As when the new or full Moon urges
The high, large, long, unbreaking surges
Of the Pacific main.

1811. First published from an MS. in 1893.

37

O mercy, O me, miserable man!
Slowly my wisdom, and how slowly comes
My Virtue! and how rapidly pass off
My Joys! my Hopes! my Friendships, and my Love!

1811. Now first published from an MS.

38

A low dead Thunder mutter'd thro' the night,
As 'twere a giant angry in his sleep—
Nature! sweet nurse, O take me in thy lap
And tell me of my Father yet unseen,
Sweet tales, and true, that lull me into sleep
And leave me dreaming.

1811. First published from an MS. in 1893.

39

His own fair countenance, his kingly forehead,
His tender smiles, Love's day-dawn on his lips,
Put on such heavenly, spiritual light,
At the same moment in his steadfast eye
Were Virtue's native crest, th' innocent soul's
Unconscious meek self-heraldry,—to man
Genial, and pleasant to his guardian angel.
He suffer'd nor complain'd;—though oft with tears
[[1006]] He mourn'd th' oppression of his helpless brethren,—
And sometimes with a deeper holier grief
Mourn'd for the oppressor—but this in sabbath hours—
A solemn grief, that like a cloud at sunset,
Was but the veil of inward meditation
Pierced thro' and saturate with the intellectual rays
It soften'd.

1812. First published (with many alterations of the MS.) in Lit. Rem., i. 277. First collected P. and D. W., 1887, ii. 364. Compare Teresa's speech to Valdez, Remorse, Act IV, Scene ii, lines [52-63] (ante, p. [866]).

40

[ARS POETICA]

In the two following lines, for instance, there is nothing objectionable, nothing which would preclude them from forming, in their proper place, part of a descriptive poem:—

'Behold yon row of pines, that shorn and bow'd
Bend from the sea-blast, seen at twilight eve.'

But with a small alteration of rhythm, the same words would be equally in their place in a book of topography, or in a descriptive tour. The same image will rise into a semblance of poetry if thus conveyed:—

'Yon row of bleak and visionary pines,
By twilight-glimpse discerned, mark! how they flee
From the fierce sea-blast, all their tresses wild
Streaming before them.'

1815. First published in Biog. Lit., 1817, ii. 18; 1847, ii. 20. First collected 1893.

41

TRANSLATION OF THE FIRST STROPHE OF
PINDAR'S SECOND OLYMPIC

'As nearly as possible word for word.'

Ye harp-controlling hymns!
(or)
Ye hymns the sovereigns of harps!
What God? what Hero?
What Man shall we celebrate?
Truly Pisa indeed is of Jove,
But the Olympiad (or, the Olympic games) did Hercules establish,
The first-fruits of the spoils of war.
But Theron for the four-horsed car
[[1007]] That bore victory to him,
It behoves us now to voice aloud:
The Just, the Hospitable,
The Bulwark of Agrigentum,
Of renowned fathers
The Flower, even him
Who preserves his native city erect and safe.

1815. First published in Biog. Lit., 1817, ii. 90; 1847, ii. 93. First collected 1893.

42

O! Superstition is the giant shadow
Which the solicitude of weak mortality,
Its back toward Religion's rising sun,
Casts on the thin mist of th' uncertain future.

1816. First published from an MS. in 1893.

43

TRANSLATION OF A FRAGMENT OF HERACLITUS[1007:1]

Not hers
To win the sense by words of rhetoric,
Lip-blossoms breathing perishable sweets;
But by the power of the informing Word
Roll sounding onward through a thousand years
Her deep prophetic bodements.

1816. First published in Lit. Rem., iii. 418, 419. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 367.

44

Truth I pursued, as Fancy sketch'd the way,
And wiser men than I went worse astray.

First published as Motto to Essay II, The Friend, 1818, ii. 37; 1850, ii. 27. First collected 1893.

45

IMITATED FROM ARISTOPHANES

(Nubes 315, 317.)

μεγάλαι θεαὶ ἀνδράσιν ἀργοῖς,
αἵπερ γνώμην καὶ διάλεξιν καὶ νοῦν ἡμῖν παρέχουσι
καὶ τερατείαν καὶ περίλεξιν καὶ κροῦσιν καὶ καταληψιν.

For the ancients . . . had their glittering vapors, which (as the comic poet tells us) fed a host of sophists.

Great goddesses are they to lazy folks,
Who pour down on us gifts of fluent speech,
Sense most sententious, wonderful fine effect,
And how to talk about it and about it,
Thoughts brisk as bees, and pathos soft and thawy.

1817. First published in The Friend, 1818, iii. 179; 1850, iii. 138. First collected 1893.

46

Let clumps of earth, however glorified,
Roll round and round and still renew their cycle—
Man rushes like a winged Cherub through
The infinite space, and that which has been
Can therefore never be again——

1820. First published from an MS. in 1893.

47

TO EDWARD IRVING

But you, honored Irving, are as little disposed as myself to favor such doctrine! [as that of Mant and D'Oyly on Infant Baptism].

Friend pure of heart and fervent! we have learnt
A different lore! We may not thus profane
The Idea and Name of Him whose Absolute Will
Is Reason—Truth Supreme!—Essential Order!

1824. First published in Aids to Reflection, 1825, p. 373. First collected 1893.

48

[LUTHER—DE DÆMONIBUS]

The devils are in woods, in waters, in wildernesses, and in dark pooly places, ready to hurt and prejudice people, etc.—Doctoris Martini Lutheri Colloquia Mensalia—(Translated by Captain Henry Bell. London, 1652, p. 370).

'The angel's like a flea,
The devil is a bore;—'
No matter for that! quoth S. T. C.,
I love him the better therefore.

Yes! heroic Swan, I love thee even when thou gabblest like a goose; for thy geese helped to save the Capitol.

1826. First published in Lit. Rem., 1839, iv. 52. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 367.

49

THE NETHERLANDS

Water and windmills, greenness, Islets green;—
Willows whose Trunks beside the shadows stood
Of their own higher half, and willowy swamp:—
Farmhouses that at anchor seem'd—in the inland sky
The fog-transfixing Spires—
Water, wide water, greenness and green banks,
And water seen—

June 1828. Now first published from an MS.

50

ELISA[1009:1]

TRANSLATED FROM CLAUDIAN

Dulce dona mihi tu mittis semper Elisa!
Et quicquid mittis Thura putare decet.

The above adapted from an Epigram of Claudian [No. lxxxii, Ad Maximum Qui mel misit], by substituting Thura for Mella: the original Distich being in return for a present of Honey.

Imitation

Sweet Gift! and always doth Elisa send
Sweet Gifts and full of fragrance to her Friend
Enough for Him to know they come from Her:
Whate'er she sends is Frankincense and Myrrh.

ANOTHER ON THE SAME SUBJECT BY S. T. C. HIMSELF

Semper Elisa! mihi tu suaveolentia donas:
Nam quicquid donas, te redolere puto.

Translation

Whate'er thou giv'st, it still is sweet to me,
For still I find it redolent of thee.

1833, 4. Now first published from an MS.

51

PROFUSE KINDNESS

Νήπιοι οὐδὲ ἴσασιν ὅσῳ πλέον πλέον ἥμισυ πάντος.

Hesiod. [Works and Days, l. 40.]

What a spring-tide of Love to dear friends in a shoal!
Half of it to one were worth double the whole!

Undated. First published in P. W., 1834.

52

I stand alone, nor tho' my heart should break,
Have I, to whom I may complain or speak.
Here I stand, a hopeless man and sad,
Who hoped to have seen my Love, my Life.
And strange it were indeed, could I be glad
Remembering her, my soul's betrothéd wife.
For in this world no creature that has life
Was e'er to me so gracious and so good.
Her loss is to my Heart, like the Heart's blood.

? S. T. C. Undated. First published from an MS. in 1893. These lines are inscribed on a fly-leaf of Tom. II of Benedetto Menzini's Poesie, 1782.

53

NAPOLEON

The Sun with gentle beams his rage disguises,
And, like aspiring Tyrants, temporises—
Never to be endured but when he falls or rises.

? S. T. C. Undated. Now first published from an MS.

54

Thicker than rain-drops on November thorn.

Undated. Now first published from an MS.

55

His native accents to her stranger's ear,
Skill'd in the tongues of France and Italy—
Or while she warbles with bright eyes upraised,
Her fingers shoot like streams of silver light
Amid the golden haze of thrilling strings.

Undated. First published from an MS. in 1893.

56

Each crime that once estranges from the virtues
Doth make the memory of their features daily
More dim and vague, till each coarse counterfeit
Can have the passport to our confidence
Sign'd by ourselves. And fitly are they punish'd
Who prize and seek the honest man but as
A safer lock to guard dishonest treasures.

? S. T. C. Undated. First published in Lit. Rem., i. 281. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 365.

57

Where'er I find the Good, the True, the Fair,
I ask no names—God's spirit dwelleth there!
The unconfounded, undivided Three,
Each for itself, and all in each, to see
In man and Nature, is Philosophy.

Undated. First published from an MS. in 1893.

58

A wind that with Aurora hath abiding
Among the Arabian and the Persian Hills.

Undated. First published from an MS. in 1893.

59

I [S. T. C.] find the following lines among my papers, in my own writing, but whether an unfinished fragment, or a contribution to some friend's production, I know not:—

What boots to tell how o'er his grave
She wept, that would have died to save;
Little they know the heart, who deem
Her sorrow but an infant's dream
Of transient love begotten;
A passing gale, that as it blows
Just shakes the ripe drop from the rose—
That dies and is forgotten.
[[1012]] O Woman! nurse of hopes and fears,
All lovely in thy spring of years,
Thy soul in blameless mirth possessing,
Most lovely in affliction's tears,
More lovely still than tears suppressing.

Undated. First published in Allsop's Letters, Conversations, &c. First collected P. and D. W., 1877, ii. 373.

60

THE THREE SORTS OF FRIENDS

Though friendships differ endless in degree,
The sorts, methinks, may be reduced to three.
Acquaintance many, and Conquaintance few;
But for Inquaintance I know only two—
The friend I've mourned with, and the maid I woo!

My dear Gillman—The ground and matériel of this division of one's friends into ac, con and inquaintance, was given by Hartley Coleridge when he was scarcely five years old [1801]. On some one asking him if Anny Sealy (a little girl he went to school with) was an acquaintance of his, he replied, very fervently pressing his right hand on his heart, 'No, she is an inquaintance!' 'Well! 'tis a father's tale'; and the recollection soothes your old friend and inquaintance,

S. T. Coleridge.

Undated. First published in Fraser's Magazine for Jan. 1835, Art. Coleridgeiana, p. 54. First collected 1893.

61

If fair by Nature
She honours the fair Boon with fair adorning,
And graces that bespeak a gracious breeding,
Can gracious Nature lessen Nature's Graces?
If taught by both she betters both and honours
Fair gifts with fair adorning, know you not
There is a beauty that resides within;—
A fine and delicate spirit of womanhood
Of inward birth?—

Now first published from an MS.

62

BO-PEEP AND I SPY—

In the corner one—
I spy Love!
In the corner None,
I spy Love.

1826. Now first published from an MS.

63

A SIMILE

As the shy hind, the soft-eyed gentle Brute
Now moves, now stops, approaches by degrees—
At length emerges from the shelt'ring Trees,
Lur'd by her Hunter with the Shepherd's flute,
Whose music travelling on the twilight breeze,
When all besides was mute—
She oft had heard, and ever lov'd to hear;
She fearful Beast! but that no sound of Fear——

Undated. Now first published from an MS.

64

BARON GUELPH OF ADELSTAN. A FRAGMENT

For ever in the world of Fame
We live and yet abide the same:
Clouds may intercept our rays,
Or desert Lands reflect our blaze.

The beauteous Month of May began,
And all was Mirth and Sport,
When Baron Guelph of Adelstan
Took leave and left the Court.

From Fête and Rout and Opera far
The full town he forsook,
And changed his wand and golden star
For Shepherd's Crown and Crook.

The knotted net of light and shade
Beneath the budding tree,
A sweeter day-bed for him made
Than Couch and Canopy.

In copse or lane, as Choice or Chance
Might lead him was he seen;
And join'd at eve the village dance
Upon the village green.

Nor endless—

Undated. Now first published from an MS.

FOOTNOTES:

[996:1] The following 'Fragments', numbered 1-63, consist of a few translations and versicles inserted by Coleridge in his various prose works, and a larger number of fragments, properly so called, which were published from MS. sources in 1893, or are now published for the first time. These fragments are taken exclusively from Coleridge's Notebooks (the source of Anima Poetæ, 1895), and were collected, transcribed, and dated by the present Editor for publication in 1893. The fragments now published for the first time were either not used by J. D. Campbell in 1893, or had not been discovered or transcribed. The very slight emendations of the text are due to the fact that Mr. Campbell printed from copies, and that the collection as a whole has now for the second time been collated with the original MSS. Fragments numbered 64, 96, 98, 111, 113, in P. W., 1893, are quotations from the plays and poems of William Cartwright (1611-1643). They are not included in the present issue. Fragments 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 67, 80, 81, 83, 88, 91, 93, 94, 117-120, are inserted in the text or among 'Jeux d'Esprit', or under other headings. The chronological order is for the most part conjectural, and differs from that suggested in 1893. It must be borne in mind that the entries in Coleridge's Notebooks are not continuous, and that the additional matter in prose or verse was inserted from time to time, wherever a page or half a page was not filled up. It follows that the context is an uncertain guide to the date of any given entry. Pains have been taken to exclude quotations from older writers, which Coleridge neither claimed nor intended to claim for his own, but it is possible that two or three of these fragments of verse are not original.

[996:2] This quatrain, described as 'The concluding stanza of an Elegy on a Lady who died in Early Youth', is from part of a memorandum in S. T. C.'s handwriting headed 'Relics of my School-boy Muse; i. e. fragments of poems composed before my fifteenth year'. It follows First Advent of Love, 'O fair is Love's first hope,' &c. (vide ante, p. [443]), and is compared with Age—a stanza written forty years later than the preceding—'Dewdrops are the gems of morning,' &c. (p. [440]).

Another Version.

O'er her piled grave the gale of evening sighs,
And flowers will grow upon its grassy slope,
I wipe the dimming waters from mine eye
Even on the cold grave dwells the Cherub Hope.

Unpublished Letter to Thomas Poole, Feb. 1. 1801, on the death of Mrs. Robinson ('Perdita').

[997:1] These two lines, slightly altered, were afterwards included in Alice du Clos (ll. 111, 112), ante, p. 473.

[998:1] The lines are an attempt to reduce to blank verse one of many minute descriptions of natural objects and scenic effects. The concluding lines are illegible.

[1001:1] These lines, 'slip torn from some old letter,' are endorsed by Poole, 'Reply of Coleridge on my urging him to exert himself.' First collected in 1893.

[1007:1] The translation is embodied in a marginal note on the following quotation from The Select Discourses by John Smith, 1660:—

'So the Sibyl was noted by Heraclitus as μαινομένῳ στόματι γελαστὰ καὶ ἀκαλλώπιστα φθεγγομένη, as one speaking ridiculous and unseemly speeches with her furious mouth.' The fragment is misquoted and misunderstood: for γελαστά, etc. should be ἀμύριστα unperfumed, inornate lays, not redolent of art.—Render it thus:

Not her's, etc.
Στόματι μαινομένῳ is 'with ecstatic mouth'.

J. D. Campbell in a note to this Fragment (P. W., 1893, pp. 464-5) quotes the 'following prose translation of the same passage', from Coleridge's Statesman's Manual (1816, p. 132); 'Multiscience (or a variety and quantity of acquired knowledge) does not test intelligence. But the Sibyll with wild enthusiastic mirth shrilling forth unmirthful, inornate and unperfumed truths, reaches to a thousand years with her voice through the power of God.'

The prose translation is an amalgam of two fragments. The first sentence is quoted by Diogenes Laertius, ix. 1: the second by Plutarch, de Pyth. orac. 6, p. 377.

[1009:1] These rhymes were addressed to a Miss Eliza Nixon, who supplied S. T. C. with books from a lending library.

METRICAL EXPERIMENTS[1014:1]