[pq] {470}
——it hath left no more
Of the mightiest things that have gone before.—[MS. G. erased.]
[363] [Omit this couplet.—Gifford.]
[pr] After this follows in the MS. erased—
Monuments that the coming age
Leaves to the spoil of the season's rage—
Till Ruin makes the relics scarce,
Then Learning acts her solemn farce,
And, roaming through the marble waste,
Prates of beauty, art, and taste.
XIX.
That Temple was more in the midst of the plain—
or, What of that shrine did yet remain
Lay to his left more in midst of the plain.—[MS. G.]
[364] [From this all is beautiful to—"He saw not—he knew not—but nothing is there."—Gifford. For "pillar's base," compare Childe Harold, Canto II. stanza x. line 2, Poetical Works, 1899, ii. 105.]
[ [ps] {471}
Is it the wind that through the stone.
or, ——o'er the heavy stone.—[MS. G. erased.]
[365] I must here acknowledge a close, though unintentional, resemblance in these twelve lines to a passage in an unpublished poem of Mr. Coleridge, called "Christabel." It was not till after these lines were written that I heard that wild and singularly original and beautiful poem recited; and the MS. of that production I never saw till very recently, by the kindness of Mr. Coleridge himself, who, I hope, is convinced that I have not been a wilful plagiarist. The original idea undoubtedly pertains to Mr. Coleridge, whose poem has been composed above fourteen years. Let me conclude by a hope that he will not longer delay the publication of a production, of which I can only add my mite of approbation to the applause of far more competent judges.
[The lines in Christabel, Part the First, 43-52, 57, 58, are these—