"O Chatterton, that thou wert yet alive!
Sure thou would'st spread thy canvas to the gale,
And love with us the tinkling team to drive
O'er peaceful freedom's undivided dale;
And we at sober eve would round thee throng,
Hanging enraptured on thy stately song,
And greet with smiles the young-eyed poesy
All deftly masked as hoar antiquity. . .
Yet will I love to follow the sweet dream
Where Susquehannah pours his untamed stream;
And on some hill, whose forest-frowning side
Waves o'er the murmurs of his calmer tide,
Will raise a solemn cenotaph to thee,
Sweet harper of time-shrouded ministrelsy."
It might be hard to prove that the Rowley poems had very much to do with giving shape to Coleridge's own poetic output. Doubtless, without them, "Christabel," and "The Ancient Mariner," and "The Darke Ladye" would still have been; and yet it is possible that they might not have been just what they are. In "The Ancient Mariner" there is the ballad strain of the "Reliques," but plus something of Chatterton's. In such lines as these:
"The bride hath paced into the hall
Red as a rose is she:
Nodding their heads before her, goes
The merry minstrelsy;"
or as these:
"The wedding guest here beat his breast
For he heard the loud bassoon:"
one catches a far-away reverberation from certain stanzas of "The Bristowe Tragedie:" this, e.g.,
"Before him went the council-men
In scarlet robes and gold,
And tassels spangling in the sun,
Much glorious to behold;"
and this:
"In different parts a godly psalm
Most sweetly they did chant:
Behind their backs six minstrels came,
Who tuned the strung bataunt."[27]
Among all the young poets of the generation that succeeded Chatterton, there was a tender feeling of comradeship with the proud and passionate boy, and a longing to admit him of their crew. Byron, indeed, said that he was insane; but Shelley, in "Adonais," classes him with Keats among "the inheritors of unfulfilled renown." Lord Houghton testifies that Keats had a prescient sympathy with Chatterton in his early death. He dedicated "Endymion" to his memory. In his epistle "To George Felton Mathew," he asks him to help him find a place