Poems of Coleridge

ANSWER TO A CHILD'S QUESTION

  Do you ask what the birds say? The Sparrow, the Dove,  The Linnet and Thrush say, "I love and I love!"  In the winter they're silent—the wind is so strong;  What it says, I don't know, but it sings a loud song.  But green leaves, and blossoms, and sunny warm weather,  And singing, and loving-all come back together.  But the Lark is so brimful of gladness and love,  The green fields below him, the blue sky above,  That he sings, and he sings; and for ever sings he—  "I love my Love, and my Love loves me!"

1802.

SOMETHING CHILDISH, BUT VERY NATURAL

WRITTEN IN GERMANY  If I had but two little wings    And were a little feathery bird,      To you I'd fly, my dear!  But thoughts like these are idle things,      And I stay here.  But in my sleep to you I fly:     I'm always with you in my sleep!         The world is all one's own.  But then one wakes, and where am I?             All, all alone.  Sleep stays not, though a monarch bids:     So I love to wake ere break of day:             For though my sleep be gone,  Yet while 'tis dark, one shuts one's lids,                And still dreams on.

April 23, 1799.

LINES ON A CHILD

  Encinctured with a twine of leaves,  That leafy twine his only dress!  A lovely Boy was plucking fruits,  By moonlight, in a wilderness.  The moon was bright, the air was free,  And fruits and flowers together grew,  On many a shrub and many a tree:  And all put on a gentle hue,  Hanging in the shadowy air  Like a picture rich and rare.  It was a climate where, they say,  The night is more belov'd than day.  But who that beauteous Boy beguil'd,  That beauteous Boy to linger here?  Alone, by night, a little child,  In place so silent and so wild-  Has he no friend, no loving mother near?

1798.

THE KNIGHT'S TOMB

  Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O'Kellyn?  Where may the grave of that good man be?—  By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn,  Under the twigs of a young birch tree!  The oak that in summer was sweet to hear,  And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year,  And whistled and roar'd in the winter alone,  Is gone,—and the birch in its stead is grown.—  The Knight's bones are dust,  And his good sword rust;—  His soul is with the saints, I trust.

? 1817.

FIRE, FAMINE, AND SLAUGHTER

A WAR ECLOGUE

_The Scene a desolated Tract in La Vendée. FAMINE is discovered lying on the ground; to her enter FIRE and SLAUGHTER.

Fam. Sisters! sisters! who sent you here?Slau. [to Fire]. I will whisper it in her ear.Fire. No! no! no!  Spirits hear what spirits tell:  'Twill make an holiday in Hell.            No! no! no!  Myself, I named him once below,  And all the souls, that damned be,  Leaped up at once in anarchy,  Clapped their hands and danced for glee.  They no longer heeded me;  But laughed to hear Hell's burning rafters  Unwillingly re-echo laughters!             No! no! no!  Spirits hear what spirits tell:  'Twill make an holiday in Hell!    Fam. Whisper it, sister! so and so!  In the dark hint, soft and slow.    Slau. Letters four do form his name-  And who sent you?Both. The same! the same!    Slau. He came by stealth, and unlocked my      den,  And I have drunk the blood since then  Of thrice three hundred thousand men.Both. Who bade you do't?    Slau. The same! the same!  Letters four do form his name.  He let me loose, and cried Halloo!  To him alone the praise is due.    Fam. Thanks, sister, thanks! the men have bled,  Their wives and their children faint for bread.  I stood in a swampy field of battle;  With bones and skulls I made a rattle,  To frighten the wolf and carrion-crow  And the homeless dog—but they would not go.  So off I flew: for how could I bear  To see them gorge their dainty fare?  I heard a groan and a peevish squall,  And through the chink of a cottage-wall—  Can you guess what I saw there?Both. Whisper it, sister! in our ear.  Fam. A baby beat its dying mother:  I had starved the one and was starving the other!Both. Who bade you do't?  Fam. The same! the same!  Letters four do form his name.  He let me loose, and cried Halloo!  To him alone the praise is due.  Fire. Sisters! I from Ireland came!  Hedge and corn-fields all on flame,  I triumph'd o'er the setting sun!  And all the while the work was done,  On as I strode with my huge strides,  I flung back my head and I held my sides,  It was so rare a piece of fun  To see the sweltered cattle run  With uncouth gallop through the night,  Scared by the red and noisy light!  By the light of his own blazing cot  Was many a naked Rebel shot:  The house-stream met the flame and hissed,  While crash! fell in the roof, I wist,  On some of those old bed-rid nurses,  That deal in discontent and curses.Both. Who bade you do't?    Fire. The same! the same!  Letters four do form his name.  He let me loose, and cried Halloo!  To him alone the praise is due.    All. He let us loose, and cried Halloo!  How shall we yield him honour due?    Fam. Wisdom comes with lack of food.  I'll gnaw, I'll gnaw the multitude,  Till the cup of rage o'erbrim:  They shall seize him and his brood—Slau. They shall tear him limb from limb!    Fire. O thankless beldames and untrue!  And is this all that you can do  For him, who did so much for you?  Ninety months he, by my troth!  Hath richly catered for you both;  And in an hour would you repay  An eight years' work?—Away! away!  I alone am faithful! I  Cling to him everlastingly.

1797.

THE TWO ROUND SPACES ON THE TOMBSTONE

  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  For the dead men's heads have slipt under their bolsters.    Ho! 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.  This tomb would be square, if it were not too long;  And 'tis rail'd round with iron, tall, 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  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.      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    After sunset, and before cock-crow,    Two round spaces clear of snow.  I swear by our Knight and his forefathers' souls,  That in size and shape they are just like the holes    In the large house of privity    Of that ancient family.  On those two places clear of snow  There have sat in the night for an hour or so,  Before sunrise, and after cock-crow  (He hicking his heels, she cursing her corns,  All to the tune of the wind in their horns),    The Devil and his Grannam,    With the snow-drift to fan 'em;  Expecting and hoping the trumpet to blow;  For they are cock-sure of the fellow below!

180O.

THE DEVIL'S THOUGHTS

  From his brimstone bed at break of day    A walking the DEVIL is gone,  To visit his little snug farm of the earth    And see how his stock went on.  Over the hill and over the dale,    And he went over the plain,  And backward and forward he swished his long tail    As a gentleman swishes his cane.  And how then was the Devil drest?    Oh! he was in his Sunday's best:  His jacket was red and his breeches were blue,    And there was a hole where the tail came through.  He saw a LAWYER killing a Viper    On a dung heap beside his stable,  And the Devil smiled, for it put him in mind    Of Cain and his brother, Abel.  A POTHECARY on a white horse    Rode by on his vocations,  And the Devil thought of his old Friend    DEATH in the Revelations.  He saw a cottage with a double coach-house,    A cottage of gentility!  And the Devil did grin, for his darling sin    Is pride that apes humility.  He went into a rich bookseller's shop,    Quoth he! we are both of one college,  For I myself sate like a cormorant once    Fast by the tree of knowledge.  Down the river there plied, with wind and tide,   A pig with vast celerity;  And the Devil look'd wise as he saw how the while,  It cut its own throat. "There!" quoth he with a smile,    "Goes 'England's commercial prosperity.'"  As he went through Cold-Bath Fields he saw    A solitary cell;  And the Devil was pleased, for it gave him a hint    For improving his prisons in Hell.* * * * * *  General – burning face    He saw with consternation,  And back to hell his way did he take,  For the Devil thought by a slight mistake    It was general conflagration.

1799.

COLOGNE

  In Kohln, a town of monks and bones,  And pavements fang'd with murderous stones,  And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches;  I counted two and seventy stenches,  All well denned, and several stinks!  Ye Nymphs that reign o'er sewers and sinks,  The river Rhine, it is well known,  Doth wash your city of Cologne;  But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine  Shall henceforth wash the river Rhine?

SONNETS ATTEMPTED IN THE MANNER OF CONTEMPORARY WRITERS

[SIGNED "NEHEMIAH HIGGINGBOTTOM"]I  Pensive at eve on the hard world I mus'd,  And my poor heart was sad: so at the moon  I gaz'd-and sigh'd, and sigh'd!—for, ah! how soon  Eve darkens into night. Mine eye perus'd  With tearful vacancy the dampy grass  Which wept and glitter'd in the paly ray;  And I did pause me on my lonely way,  And mused me on those wretched ones who pass  O'er the black heath of Sorrow. But, alas!  Most of Myself I thought: when it befell  That the sooth Spirit of the breezy wood  Breath'd in mine ear—"All this is very well;  But much of one thing is for no thing good."  Ah! my poor heart's inexplicable swell!IITO SIMPLICITY  O! I do love thee, meek Simplicity!  For of thy lays the lulling simpleness  Goes to my heart and soothes each small distress,  Distress though small, yet haply great to me!  'Tis true on Lady Fortune's gentlest pad  I amble on; yet, though I know not why,  So sad I am!—but should a friend and I  Grow cool and miff, O! I am very sad!  And then with sonnets and with sympathy  My dreamy bosom's mystic woes I pall;  Now of my false friend plaining plaintively,  Now raving at mankind in general;  But, whether sad or fierce, 'tis simple all,  All very simple, meek Simplicity!IIION A RUINED HOUSE IN A ROMANTIC COUNTRY  And this reft house is that the which he built,  Lamented Jack! And here his malt he pil'd,  Cautious in vain! These rats that squeak so wild,  Squeak, not unconscious of their father's guilt.  Did ye not see her gleaming thro' the glade?  Belike, 'twas she, the maiden all forlorn.  What though she milk no cow with crumpled horn,  Yet aye she haunts the dale where erst she stray'd;  And aye beside her stalks her amorous knight!  Still on his thighs their wonted brogues are worn,  And thro' those brogues, still tatter'd and betorn,  His hindward charms gleam an unearthly white;  As when thro' broken clouds at night's high noon  Peeps in fair fragments forth the full—orb'd harvest-moon!

1797.

LIMBO

  Tis a strange place, this Limbo!—not a Place,  Yet name it so;—where Time and weary Space  Fettered from flight, with night-mare sense of fleeing,  Strive for their last crepuscular half-being;—  Lank Space, and scytheless Time with branny hands  Barren and soundless as the measuring sands,  Not mark'd by flit of Shades,—unmeaning they  As moonlight on the dial of the day!  But that is lovely—looks like human Time,—  An old man with a steady look sublime,  That stops his earthly task to watch the skies;  But he is blind—a statue hath such eyes;—  Yet having moonward turn'd his face by chance,  Gazes the orb with moon-like countenance,  With scant white hairs, with fore top bald and high,  He gazes still,—his eyeless face all eye;—  As 'twere an organ full of silent sight,  His whole face seemeth to rejoice in light!  Lip touching lip, all moveless, bust and limb—  He seems to gaze at that which seems to gaze on him!    No such sweet sights doth Limbo den immure,  Wall'd round, and made a spirit-jail secure,  By the mere horror of blank Naught-at-all,  Whose circumambience doth these ghosts enthral.  A lurid thought is growthless, dull Privation,  Yet that is but a Purgatory curse;  Hell knows a fear far worse,  A fear—a future state;—'tis positive Negation!

1817.

METRICAL FEET

LESSON FOR A BOY

[** Macron and breve accent marks have been left off, see the note in the Forum.]

  Trochee trips from long to short;  From long to long in solemn sort  Slow Spondee stalks; strong foot! yea ill able  Ever to come up with Dactyl trisyllable.  Iambics march from short to long;—  With a leap and a bound the swift Anapaests throng;  One syllable long, with one short at each side,  Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride;—  First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer  Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud highbred Racer.  If Derwent be innocent, steady, and wise,  And delight in the things of earth, water, and skies;  Tender warmth at his heart, with these metres to show it,  With sound sense in his brains, may make Derwent a poet,—  May crown him with fame, and must win him the love  Of his father on earth and his Father above.  My dear, dear child!  Could you stand upon Skiddaw, you would not from its whole ridge  See a man who so loves you as your fond S. T. COLERIDGE.

1803.

THE HOMERIC HEXAMETER DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED

[FROM SCHILLER]  Strongly it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows,  Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean.

? 1799.

THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED

[FROM SCHILLER]  In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column;  In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

?1799.

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES

[FROM MATTHISON]  Hear, my beloved, an old Milesian story!—  High, and embosom'd in congregated laurels,  Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland;  In the dim distance amid the skiey billows  Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had blest it.  From the far shores of the bleat-resounding island  Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,  Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,  Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes  Up to the groves of the high embosom'd temple.  There in a thicket of dedicated roses,  Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,  Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,  Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,  And with invisible pilotage to guide it  Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor  Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.

? 1799.

TO –

  I mix in life, and labour to seem free,    With common persons pleased and common things,  While every thought and action tends to thee,    And every impulse from thy influence springs.

? 1796.

EPITAPH ON A BAD MAN

  Under this stone does Walter Harcourt lie,    Who valued nought that God or man could give;  He lived as if he never thought to die;    He died as if he dared not hope to live!

1801.

THE SUICIDE'S ARGUMENT

  Ere the birth of my life, if I wish'd it or no,  No question was asked me—it could not be so!  If the life was the question, a thing sent to try,  And to live on be Yes; what can No be? to die.NATURE'S ANSWER  Is't returned, as 'twas sent? Is't no worse for the wear?  Think first, what you are! Call to mind what you were!  I gave you innocence, I gave you hope,  Gave health, and genius, and an ample scope.  Return you me guilt, lethargy, despair?  Make out the invent'ry; inspect, compare!  Then die—if die you dare!

1811.

THE GOOD, GREAT MAN

  "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."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?  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,  HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!

Morning Post, Sept. 23,1802.

INSCRIPTION FOR A FOUNTAIN ON A HEATH

  This Sycamore, oft musical with bees,—  Such tents the Patriarchs loved! O long unharmed  May all its aged boughs o'er-canopy  The small round basin, which this jutting stone  Keeps pure from falling leaves! Long may the Spring,  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,  Which at the bottom, like a Fairy's Page,  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.  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.

INSCRIPTION FOR A TIME-PIECE

  Now! it is gone.—Our brief hours travel post,  Each with its thought or deed, its Why or How:—  But know, each parting hour gives up a ghost  To dwell within thee-an eternal NOW!

? 183O.

A TOMBLESS EPITAPH

  'Tis true, Idoloclastes Satyrane!  (So call him, for so mingling blame with praise  And smiles with anxious looks, his earliest friends,  Masking his birth-name, wont to character   His wild-wood fancy and impetuous zeal)  'Tis true that, passionate for ancient truths,  And honouring with religious love the Great  Of older times, he hated to excess,  With an unquiet and intolerant scorn,  The hollow puppets of an hollow age,  Ever idolatrous, and changing ever  Its worthless idols! Learning, power, and time,  (Too much of all) thus wasting in vain war  Of fervid colloquy. Sickness, 'tis true,  Whole years of weary days, besieged him close,  Even to the gates and inlets of his life!  But it is true, no less, that strenuous, firm,  And with a natural gladness, he maintained  The citadel unconquered, and in joy  Was strong to follow the delightful Muse.  For not a hidden path, that to the shades  Of the beloved Parnassian forest leads,  Lurked undiscovered by him; not a rill  There issues from the fount of Hippocrene,  But he had traced it upward to its source,  Through open glade, dark glen, and secret dell,  Knew the gay wild flowers on its banks, and culled  Its med'cinable herbs. Yea, oft alone,  Piercing the long-neglected holy cave,  The haunt obscure of old Philosophy,  He bade with lifted torch its starry walls  Sparkle, as erst they sparkled to the flame  Of odorous lamps tended by Saint and Sage.  O framed for calmer times and nobler hearts!  O studious Poet, eloquent for truth!  Philosopher! contemning wealth and death,  Yet docile, childlike, full of Life and Love!  Here, rather than on monumental stone,  This record of thy worth thy Friend inscribes,  Thoughtful, with quiet tears upon his cheek.

? 1809.

EPITAPH

  Stop, Christian passer-by!—Stop, child of God,  And read with gentle breast. Beneath this sod  A poet lies, or that which once seem'd he.—  O, lift one thought in prayer for S. T. C.;  That he who many a year with toil of breath  Found death in life, may here find life in death!  Mercy for praise—to be forgiven for fame  He ask'd, and hoped, through Christ. Do thou the same!

9th November 1833.

NOTES

I am indebted to Mr. Heinemann, the owner of the copyright of Dykes Campbell's edition of Coleridge's Poetical Works (Macmillan & Co., 1893) for permission to use that text (one of the most carefully edited texts of any English poet) in this volume of selections. My aim, in making these selections, has been to give every poem of Coleridge's that seems to me really good, and nothing else. Not every poem, none perhaps of those in blank verse, is equal throughout; but I think readers of Coleridge will be surprised to find how few of the poems contained in this volume are not of almost flawless workmanship, as well of incomparable poetic genius. Scarcely any English poet gains so much as Coleridge by not being read in a complete edition. The gulf between his best and his worst work is as wide as the gulf between good and evil. Even Wordsworth, even Byron, is not so intolerable to read in a complete edition. But Coleridge, much more easily than Byron or Wordsworth, can be extricated from his own lumber-heaps; it is rare in his work to find a poem which is really good in parts and not really good as a whole. I have taken every poem on its own merits as poetry, its own technical merits as verse; and thus have included equally the frigid eighteenth-century conceits of "The Kiss" and the modern burlesque license of the comic fragments. But I have excluded everything which has an interest merely personal, or indeed any other interest than that of poetry; and I have thus omitted the famous "Ode on the Departing Year," in spite of the esteem in which Coleridge held it, and in spite of its one exquisite line—

"God's image, sister of the Seraphim"—

and I have omitted it because as a whole it is untempered rhetoric, shapeless in form; and I have also omitted confession pieces such as that early one which contains, among its otherwise too emphatic utterances, the most delicate and precise picture which Coleridge ever drew of himself:

    "To me hath Heaven with bounteous hand assigned    Energic Reason and a shaping mind,    The daring ken of Truth, the Patriot's part,    And Pity's sigh, that breathes the gentle heart—    Sloth-jaundiced all! and from my graspless hand    Drop Friendship's precious pearls, like hour-glass sand.    I weep, yet stoop not! the faint anguish flows,    A dreamy pang in Morning's feverish doze."

Every poem that I have given I have given in full, and, without exception, in the form in which Coleridge left it. The dates given after the poems are Dykes Campbell's; occasionally I have corrected the date given in the text of his edition by his own correction in the notes.

p. I. The Ancient Mariner. The marginal analysis which Coleridge added in reprinting the poem (from the Lyrical Ballads) in Sibylline Leaves, has been transferred to this place, where it can be read without interrupting the narrative in verse.

PART I

An ancient Mariner meeteth three Gallants bidden to a wedding-feast, and detaineth one.

The Wedding-Guest is spell-bound by the eye of the old sea-faring man, and constrained to hear his tale.

The Mariner tells how the ship sailed southward with a good wind and fair weather, till it reached the Line.

The Wedding-Guest heareth the bridal music; but the Mariner continueth his tale.

The ship driven by a storm toward the south pole.

The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where no living thing was to be seen.

Till a great sea-bird, called the Albatross, came through the snow-fog, and was received with great joy and hospitality.

And lo! the Albatross proveth a bird of good omen, and followeth the ship as it returned northward through fog and floating ice.

The ancient Mariner inhospitably killeth the pious bird of good omen.

PART II

His shipmates cry out against the ancient Mariner, for killing the bird of good luck.

But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.

The fair breeze continues; the ship enters the Pacific Ocean, and sails northward, even till it reaches the Line.