The Poetical Works of Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats, Complete in One Volume ...

Pleasures of Imagination. for being round. Why then write Sonnets or Mono- There is one species of Egotism which is truly dies ? Because they give me pleasure when perhaps disgusting ; not that which leads us to communicate nothing else could. After the more violent emotions our feelings to others but that which would reduce of Sorrow, the mind demands amusement, and can the feelings of others to an identity with our own. find it in employment alone : but, full of its late suf- The Atheist, who exclaims “ pshaw !” when he ferings, it can endure no employment not in some glances his eye on the praises of Deity, is an Egotist : measure connected with them. Forcibly to turn an old man, when he speaks contemptuously of Loveaway our attention to general subjects is a painful verses, is an Egotist: and the sleek Favorites of and most often an unavailing effort.

Fortune are Egotists, when they condemn all “ mel. But O! how grateful to a wounded heart

ancholy, discontented” verses. Surely, it would be The tale of Misery to impart

candid not merely to ask whether the poem pleases From others' eyes bid artless sorrows flow, And raise esteem upon the base of Woe!

ourselves, but to consider whether or no there may

Shaw. not be others, to whom it is well calculated to give The communicativeness of our Nature leads us to an innocent pleasure. describe our own sorrows; in the endeavor to de- * I shall only add, that each of my readers will, 1 scribe them, intellectual activity is exerted; and hope, remember, that these Poems on various subfrom intellectual activity there results a pleasure, jects, which he reads at one time and under the inwhich is gradually associated, and mingles as a cor- fluence of one set of feelings, were written at differrective, with the painful subject of the description.ent times and prompted by very different feelings; " True!" (it may be answered)" but how are the and therefore that the supposed inferiority of one Public interested in your sorrows or your Descrip- Poem to another may sometimes be owing to thu tion ?" We are for ever attributing personal Unities temper of mind in which he happens to peruse it. to imaginary Aggregates. What is the Public, but a term for a number of scattered individuals ? of whom My poems have been rightly charged with a pru as many will be interested in these sorrows, as have fusion of double-epithets, and a general turgidness experienced the same or similar.

I have pruned the double-epithets with no sparing Holy be the lay

hand ; and used my best efforts to tame the swell Which mourning soothes the mourner on his way. and glitter both of thought and diction.* This latter If I could judge of others by myself, I should not hesitate to affirm, that the most interesting passages

* Without any feeling of anger, I may yet be allowed to are those in which the Author develops his own express some degree of surprise, that after having run the

critical gauntlet for a certain class of faults, which I had, viz. feelings? The sweet voice of Cona* never sounds a too ornate and elaborately poetic diction, and nothing hav80 sweetly, as when it speaks of itself; and I should ing come before the judgment-seat of the Reviewers during almost suspect that man of an unkindly heart, who the long interval, I should for at least seventeen years, quarter could read the opening of the third book of the Para- after quarter, have been placed by them in the foremost rank dise Lost without peculiar emotion. By a Law of our ridicule for faults directly opposite, viz. bald and prosaic lan

of the proscribed, and made to abide the brunt of abuse and Nature, he, who labors under a strong feeling, is guage, and an affected simplicity both of matter and manner

-faults which assuredly did not enter into the character of • Ossian.

my compositions. - Literary Life, i 51. Published 1817

AN ALLEGORY.

fault however had insinuated itself into my Religious And when thou lovest thy pale orb to shroud C Musings with such intricacy of union, that some- Behind the gather'd blackness lost on high;d times I have omitted to disentangle the weed from And when thou dartest from the wind-rent cloudc the fear of snapping the flower. A third and heavier Thy placid lightning o'er the awaken'd skyt accusation has been brought against me, that of ob- Ah such is Hope' as changeful and as fair scurity ; but not, I think, with equal justice. An Now dimly peering on the wistful sight; oh Author is obscure, when his conceptions are dim Now hid behind the dragon-wing'd Despair and imperfect, and his language incorrect, or unap- But soon emerging in her radiant might, at propriate, or involved. A poem that abounds in She o'er the sorrow-clouded breast of Care e allusions, like the Bard of Gray, or one that imper- Sails, like a meteor kindling in its flight. I sonates high and abstract truths, like Collins's Ode on the poetical character, claims not to be popularbut should be acquitted of obscurity. The deficiency is in the Reader. But this is a charge which every poet, whose imagination is warm and rapid, must

TIME, REAL AND IMAGINARY. expect from his contemporaries. Milton did not escape it; and it was adduced with virulence against Gray and Collins. We now hear no more of it: On the wide level of a mountain's head not that their poems are better understood at present, (I knew not where, but 't was some faery place than they were at their first publication; but their Their pinions, ostrich-like, for sails outspread, fame is established ; and a critic would accuse him- Two lovely children run an endless race, self of frigidity or inattention, who should profess A sister and a brother ! not to understand them. But a living writer is yet This far outstript the other; sub judice; and if we cannot follow his conceptions Yet ever runs she with reveried face, or enter into his feelings, it is more consoling to our And looks and listens for the boy behind : pride to consider him as lost beneath, than as soaring For he, alas! is blind ! above us. If any man expect from my poems the O'er rough and smooth with even step he passid, same easiness of style which he admires in a drink. And knows not whether he be first or last. ing-song, for him I have not written. Intelligibilia, non intellectum adfero.

I expect neither profit nor general fame by my writings ; and I consider myself as having been

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF amply repaid without either. Poetry has been to me its own “ exceeding great reward :" it has soothed

CHATTERTON. my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude: and it has given O WHAT a wonder seems the fear of death, me the habit of wishing to discover the Good and Seeing how gladly we all sink to sleep, the Beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me. Babes, Children, Youths and Men,

S. T. C. Night following night for threescore years and ter

But doubly strange, where life is but a breath

To sigh and pant with, up Want's rugged steep JUVENILE POEMS.

Away, Grim Phantom! Scorpion King, away

Reserve thy terrors and thy stings display

For coward Wealth and Guilt in robes of state
GENEVIEVE.

Lo! by the grave I stand of one, for whom
Maid of my Love, sweet Genevieve! A prodigal Nature and a niggard Doom
In beauty's light you glide along :

(That all bestowing, this withholding all) Your eye is like the star of eve,

Made each chance knell from distant spire or come And sweet your voice, as seraph's song. Sound like a seeking Mother's anxious call, Yet not your heavenly beauty gives

Return, poor Child! Home, weary Truant, homo ! This heart with passion soft to glow : Within your soul a voice there lives!

Thee, Chatterton! these unblest stones protect It bids you hear the tale of woe.

From want, and the bleak freezings of neglect When sinking low the sufferer wan

Too long before the vexing Storm-blast driven, Beholds no hand outstretch'd to save,

Here hast thou found repose! beneath this sod! Fair, as the bosom of the swan

Thou ! O vain word! thou dwell'st not with the clod That rises graceful o'er the wave,

Amid the shining Host of the Forgiven
I've seen your breast with pity heave, Thou at the throne of Mercy and thy God
And therefore love I you, sweet Genevieve! The triumph of redeeming Love dost hymn

(Believe it, O my soul !) to harps of Seraphim.

SONNET.

TO THE AUTUMNAL MOON.

MILD Splendor of the various-vested Night!
Mother of wildly-working visions ! hail! De
I watch thy gliding, while with watery light
Thy wenk eye glimmers through a fleecy veil ;

Yet oft, perforce ('t is suffering Nature's call,)
I weep, that heaven-born Genius sc shall fall;

And oft, in Fancy's saddest hour, my soul
Averted shudders at the poison’d bowl.
Now groans my sickening heart, as still I view

Thy corse of livid hue ;
Now indignation checks the feeble sigh,
Or flashes through the tear that glistens in mine eye.

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