[[49]]
Mourner's] Mourners' L. R., 1863.
FANCY IN NUBIBUS[435:1]
OR THE POET IN THE CLOUDS
O! it is pleasant, with a heart at ease,
Just after sunset, or by moonlight skies,
To make the shifting clouds be what you please,
Or let the easily persuaded eyes
Own each quaint likeness issuing from the mould [5]
Of a friend's fancy; or with head bent low
And cheek aslant see rivers flow of gold
'Twixt crimson banks; and then, a traveller, go
From mount to mount through Cloudland, gorgeous land!
Or list'ning to the tide, with closéd sight, 10
Be that blind bard, who on the Chian strand
By those deep sounds possessed with inward light,
Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee
Rise to the swelling of the voiceful sea.
1817.
FOOTNOTES:
[435:1] First published in Felix Farley's Bristol Journal for February 7, 1818: and afterwards in Blackwood's Magazine for November, 1819. First collected in 1828: included in 1829 and 1834. A MS. in the possession of Major Butterworth of Carlisle is signed 'S. T. Coleridge, Little Hampton, Oct. 1818'. In a letter to Coleridge dated Jan. 10, 1820, Lamb asks, 'Who put your marine sonnet [i. e. A Sonnet written on the Sea Coast, vide Title] . . . in Blackwood?' F. Freiligrath in his Introduction to the Tauchnitz edition says that the last five lines are borrowed from Stolberg's An das Meer; vide [Appendices] of this edition.